Rotana Ty

I continue to share my summer gems with August gems. Enjoy.

Table of Contents

Insightful Reminders

“Expression” and “impression”. Your writing and your media needs to be an expression of your thoughts and impressions of the world. That’s what the people who are open to reading and watching new things want from their media.” — Baldur Bjarnason

“There are certain tasks where technology can be a lever to help us be more productive. And there are other tasks that beg to receive the attention of human thought and emotional energy. Our task is to figure out which is which:

Students shouldn’t focus on learning how to be productive with technology; they need to learn how to think about how they use it.“

“(…) Blogging is expressing your impression. It’s deriving action from thought. Regardless of how much the AI sphere may not be giving thought to its actions, continued blogging in the face of that reality is deliberate action with thought — something only us humans can do. Blog. Blog against the dying of the light.” — Jim Nielsen

“To paraphrase Bacon – Knowledge only be of good use unless like dung it is widely spread.” — Andrew Trickett

“I think awe is born of attentiveness or awareness. Not just to those big moments or magnificent views, but of the humble, dailyness of our daily lives.” — Begin in Wonder

“It can’t be about how fast or efficient we are, or the volume of work we get through in a week but how much true value or impact we create over time.” — Rachel Botsman

“How to make learning come alive? Learn, share, apply.” — Jane McConnell

Immersive Artful Experiences

Mesmerizing. Watch this immersive experience on sports at the Korean Cultural Institute in Paris, France.

This month I also travelled to Bordeaux, France. I particularly enjoyed wandering in the Bassin des Lumières, an impressive former submarine base that was built by the Germans during the Second World War. As described on the website:

“Culturespaces is bringing the base back to life by creating the largest French digital art centre holding major immersive exhibitions.”

I had a similar immersive artistic experience years ago when I was thinking about the futures of the workplace.

In the artful and historical city of Bordeaux, it was also fascinating to see and feel the works of famous artists on large walls and in the water. From Vermeer to Van Gogh. From Mondrian. Here are some photos I took.

1 2 3 4 5

a room with lights and a reflection of a mirror

a room with many squares and a reflection of a mirror

a large room with a large mural of people

Another artistic place I enjoyed discovering was La Méca.

“On the banks of the River Garonne, culture and architecture come together in spectacular fashion. La MÉCA (Maison de l’Économie Créative et de la Culture en Aquitaine) is Bordeaux’s monumental culture hub that hosts contemporary art exhibitions, cinema, and performances year-round. Nearly a thousand pixel-windows from Reynaers Aluminium perforate La MÉCA’s façade, contributing to the building’s distinctive design.

Sharp lines, plus distorted perspectives and vanishing points: MÉCA is impressive from afar and up-close. Its 37-metre-high arch rests on two concrete piers, connected across their two upper levels by a steel-framed bridge. Yet it is the pixelated façade that grasps your attention, thanks to the innovative design from the minds of Freaks Architecture and Danish architect Bjarke Ingels. This interplay of clever solutions results in a dynamic image of the public building, from whichever angle you approach it.” — Freaks Architecture BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group)

1 2 3

a large white building with a large square structure

a building with a person walking down the stairs

Epic Paris 2024 Olympic Games

“The Olympics aren’t just about who’s the fastest or the strongest – they’re about the best of human nature shining through in moments of extreme pressure.” — William J. Ryan

The opening ceremony caught my attention, especially with this moment with a featuring and cover of two French artists:

“Another emotional moment at the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games on Friday on the Seine. Embarked on a flamboyant raft, Juliette Armanet, accompanied by Sofiane Pamart on piano, performed John Lennon’s “Imagine”. A hymn to peace, a fundamental value supported by the Olympic spirit, in the Parisian night.”

I was unable to watch the Closing Ceremony from the beginning as I was travelling on the same day. Luckily I caught up with the replay. Once again, it was a featuring between three artists that made me enjoy this event:

“Invited by Phoenix and Kavinsky, the Belgian singer, Angèle, performs Nightcall” with them on stage”

More surprising. The appearance of the Khmer rapper, VannDa, with Phoenix for ten seconds. Little known in France, he is famous in Cambodia.

“At the time of the global pandemic, the rapper released Time to Rise, which racked up 123 million views on YouTube. The track blends his two languages, traditional music and modern rap. This track catapulted him onto the international scene.

The artist performed it on Sunday evening on the stage of the Stade de France, wearing traditional dress. “He is the redefinition of Cambodian music”, according to the organisers of the closing ceremony.” – Le Figaro

August Music Playlist

Barack Obama shared his Summer playlists of books and music.

“With summer winding down, I wanted to share some songs that I’ve been listening to lately – and it wouldn’t be my playlist if it didn’t include an eclectic mix. I hope you find something new to listen to!”

Melting ice caps slow Earth’s spin, lengthening days at ‘unprecedented’ rate

1 2 3

a white square with multicolored lines and text on it

a colorful rainbow background with white text

Back in the day. I enjoy listening again: Common – The People.

What are yours?

Here is my 2024 Summer playlist. Enjoy.

The Earth’s Inner Core Reversal & Ours

“Knowing the exact orientation of Earth at any given moment is crucial when attempting to communicate with a spaceship, such as the Voyager probes that are now well beyond our solar system, where even a slight deviation of a centimeter can end up being kilometers off by the time it reaches its destination.”

The Earth’s Inner Core Reversal

“According to recent research published in Nature Geoscience, Earth’s inner core may have temporarily paused its rotation and begun reversing direction relative to the planet’s surface.”

This made me resurface this quote in my oldie on staying fresh:

“In times of change, learners inherit the Earth while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.” — Eric Hoffer

This month has been particularly hot in France, with heatwaves. What are the implications for the planet?

Scientists have expressed concern about the potential impact of such heatwaves, which could become more frequent and severe, further destabilising the Antarctic ice sheets and contributing to global sea level rise. As reported in this Guardian article.

Mars Exploration

“I think that we should go to Mars not because it’s an easy escape, but because we have grown up and we’re using it as a training ground for a much more adult civilisation to take its first steps towards becoming interplanetary, and later on, interstellar. But we should also use all that technology to look back at the Earth.

Projecting ourselves into space is challenging our brains to find solutions that we would not otherwise be seeking on our planet.” — Nathalie Cabrol, director of SETI and author of The Secret Life of the Universe

Read my notes on Cabrol’s latest book.

Posters: Visions of the Future

JPL’s Exoplanet Travel Bureau presents: Visions of the Future.

“Imagination is our window into the future. At NASA/JPL we strive to be bold in advancing the edge of possibility so that someday, with the help of new generations of innovators and explorers, these visions of the future can become a reality. As you look through these images of imaginative travel destinations, remember that you can be an architect of the future.”

My favourite poster is below.

Source: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/55-cancri-e-jpl-travel-poster

“A global ocean of lava under sparkling, silicate skies reflecting the lava below: what better choice for an extreme vacation? Planet Janssen, or 55 Cancri e, orbits a star called Copernicus only 41 light years away.

The molten surface is completely uninhabitable, but you’ll ride safely above, taking in breathtaking views: the burning horizon, Janssen’s sister planet Galileo hanging in a dark sky, and curtains of glowing particles as you glide across the terminator to Janssen’s dark side. Book your travel now to the hottest vacation spot in the galaxy, 55 Cancri e.”

What is your favourite?

Pacing Myself before Back-To-School

I listened to this podcast episode about recalibrating and adjusting our inner pace as the holidays come to an end and back to school approaches.

“Yesterday, we juggled our working hours with the hours we had left for our loved ones, an activity or two, and the constraints of everyday life. The next day, time is different. Holidays destabilise our clock and force us to think differently about our rhythm.”

As a learner experience designer and teacher, I am preparing for back-to-school with new cohorts and different subjects. This post by Taruna Goel made me reflect on the pedagogies I use to design learner experiences and teach.

“What instructional models have you found particularly effective in your practice? How have you personalized these models to enhance engagement, learning, and transfer?”

Perhaps a mixture of ADDIE, 70 20 10 principles and human centred design. As shared in this oldie on propelling learner experiences.

I am also working on the workbooks of this book ‘Tous pédagogues’ to continuously improve my pedagogy and teaching practice.

Another post reminds me what this is all about:

“Curiosity is the source of wisdom and wonder. Fred Rogers once said in an interview, “Our society is much more interested in information than wonder, in noise rather than silence… And I feel that we need a lot more wonder and a lot more silence in our lives” I want to make space for both within my classroom.”

There is also this quote at the top of the post:

“Always be on the look out for the presence of wonder.” — E.B. White

This makes me resurface this oldie about wandering with creative generalists, which also begins with this quote. I wrote:

ABC of the Creative Generalist

Addicted to learning: keep learning at any age.

Balance for extensive research + sharing your cross-pollination of ideas/sense-making. It is your contribution to the world.

C for seeing the periphery, scanning the horizon, seeing beyond, sharing insights and seeing who else sees what you see.

Use your diverse skills for collaboration, cooperation, and co-creation.

If I had to refresh this post a bit, it would be: ABC of the neo-generalist:

Addicted to learning.

Balance for research and continuous learning powered by GenAI and PKMastery. Extracting and sharing the crème de la crème.

C for seeing the periphery, scanning the horizon, seeing beyond and the dimensions. Share insights and visions.

Use your skills, toolsets and mindsets to collaborate, co-create, cooperate and keep learning.

Happy Summertime

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August 17, 2024/0 Comments/by Rotana Ty

Summer Gems

Summer Gems.

“All human wisdom is contained in these two words – Wait and Hope” ― Alexandre Dumas, Le Comte de Monte-Christo

“We’re looking at a new world. New worlds are always hard on old ideas.” ― Ancient Shores, Jack McDevitt via Jane McConnell

As I did for my Spring Gems I review what caught my attention in July 2024 on media tools and in my personal archives. Here are the insights.

Table of Contents

With(out) Generative AI

“Ever wonder where we’re heading as a society in the era of hashtag#ai? Have you recently enjoyed that wave of relief when a human responds to your help request? #aiisameansnotthegoal” ― Michael Running Wolf

“Linas Beliunas & will.i.am: “It’s sad that we’re going to live in a world … where machines will be more articulate, capable of analytical, critical thinking, banter ability, contextual, deep understanding, while we (humans) have resorted to short tweets, emojis, memes, and stickers to communicate”.

“Sometimes on the way to your dreams, you get lost and find a better one!” via Trish Wilson

“What do you get when you combine brainstorming with roleplays?” ― ModelThinkers

Rolestorming

“Actionable Takeaways

Generate ideas by shifting perspectives.

Ask what would <another person> think/ say/ suggest / do in this situation? Use Rolestorming as a group ideation technique or to reframe a problem for yourself. Use the table above as a starting point and quickly define the person’s worldview and unique perspective before applying it to your current problem.

Challenge your view and shift your habits with Rolestorming.

Beyond innovation, consider how you can challenge and shift your self-identity by asking ‘What would a x person do in this situation?’ Where x might be a person who is healthy, funny, creative, ethical, empathetic, or any attribute you want to improve in yourself. Acting from that place will build up your evidence that you are ‘that sort of person’ and allow identity-based habits to take root.”

Hosting Nudges

“I was speaking at a conference today and one of the facilitators did such a beautiful ice breaker exercise I wanted to share it with you:
* How did you get your name? (First, middle, last)
* What’s the story behind it?” ― Rachel Botsman

“(…) knowing how to create meaning with and for your people is a gift. And it’s learnable. And it’s free.

No matter your age or budget, go have some fun.” ― Priya Parker

“It’s so easy to feel like you’ve missed the chance to connect with someone once a certain amount of time has passed, but the reality is that as long as you’re still receptive, that window has not closed!” ― Claire O’Brien

“How do you improve independent and collective thinking?”

“(…) Diverge, converge, diverge, converge.

You walk away to come back together to ignite something with energy.“

Source: https://substack.com/@rachelbotsman/note/c-61502390?r=1dkqpl

Effortless & Fulfilling Way of Living

“Trying Not to Try” by Edward Slingerland. Insights from Perplexity via Daniel Durrant.

“Major Takeaways and Lessons

Indirect Pursuit of Goals: Slingerland emphasizes that many goals, such as happiness and success, are best achieved indirectly. Trying too hard can lead to counterproductive outcomes, while a more relaxed approach can yield better results.

Integration of Philosophies: The book suggests that both Daoist and Confucian strategies can be integrated to achieve wu-wei. While Daoism provides a more passive approach, Confucianism offers a structured path to internalize virtuous behavior.

Modern Relevance: Slingerland connects ancient wisdom with modern cognitive science, showing how wu-wei aligns with contemporary understandings of the brain and behavior. He argues that spontaneous generosity and authentic behavior are governed by automatic mental processes, which can be cultivated.”

Relevance in Contemporary Context

In today’s fast-paced and achievement-oriented society, the ideas presented in Trying Not to Try are particularly relevant. The book offers a counter-narrative to the pervasive culture of constant striving and self-improvement. By advocating for a more relaxed and indirect approach to achieving goals, Slingerland provides a refreshing perspective that can help individuals find balance and authenticity in their lives.

In conclusion, Trying Not to Try by Edward Slingerland is a thought-provoking exploration of how ancient Chinese wisdom and modern science converge to reveal the power of spontaneity. The book’s insights into wu-wei offer valuable lessons for anyone seeking a more effortless and fulfilling way of living.

“As marine biologist Wallace Nichols wrote in Blue Mind, water tends to induce “a mildly meditative state characterized by calm, peacefulness, unity, and a sense of general happiness and satisfaction with life in the moment.” via Adam Grant

Creativity & Agency

“In other words, creativity has a lot to do with agency. Of being asked to make choices that enable the making of creative work and which affect its quality. Choices that affect, too, your experience of this: can you learn from your process? Can you sustain effort? Can you take joy from it, deriving inspiration and momentum that can help you move onto future projects?

This experience of being creative is inflected by agency – how much you have and over what areas of your life. When it comes to choosing how you spend your time alone, how much of your ‘own’ time do you possess? Are you in a position to dictate or negotiate many or some of the day-job conditions that will inform the way in which you live for this time?

What agency can you exercise in the way you respond to whatever conditions with which you are contending? Are you abundantly resourced or bedevilled with hard decisions over how to stretch a tight budget? What obligations do you owe to dependents, partners, bosses, colleagues, comrades, friends, or family?” ― Meredith Lewis

“Have the temerity to experiment with what your nascent creative practice might look like. Prize temerity over success.” ― Meredith Lewis

Imaginize World

From Jane McConnell a fellow seeker and member of the Perpetual Beta Coffee Club, hosted by Harold Jarche:

“I just reviewed the first months results from my imaginize.world podcast. I did a pdf of the homepage, that leads you to person pages with links to videos, audio files and transcripts. Substack wont let me post it, so head over to my own website and grab your copy. imaginize.world

Click on the titles in the pdf and move straight to the guest page. Enjoy – and let me know your thoughts? Any ideas for imaginize.world?

I have saved my copy to reflect on when time permits.

“With every future we wish to create, we must first learn to imagine it.” ― Chen Quifan via Jane McConnell

Along with my summer reading list, I now have a listening list for this Summer and beyond: the Imaginize World podcast hosted by Jane.

Continuous Learning

“The leader’s central task is to design environments that promote knowledge creation, continuous learning, and innovation.

It’s an atmosphere of guided autonomy.” ― Ed Morrison

“70:20:10 is a reference framework and not an implementation model.

70:20:10 simply points out that most learning occurs as part of working and sharing with others (the ’70’ and ’20’ parts) and the model helps organisations design solutions that exploit learning from working and learning with others.” ― Charles Jennings

As I prepare for the return of new courses and workshops in September, two actionable insights are great reminders:

“I strive to connect with students on an individual level and try to find the words and motivation that will unlock something for them. I am always learning from them too, and I look forward to this class every year with both anticipation and fear!” ― Mary Dunleavy via Barbara Shirvis

“How do you make the shift from learning designer to learning/[learner] experience designer?” ― Srividya Kumar

Short answer: using Human-Centered Design.

Happy Summertime

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July 15, 2024/0 Comments/by Rotana Ty

Spring Gems

Futures Thinking, Top Posts

Spring Gems.

“On building & maintaining a knowledge garden: “Gardens require work, but it’s work that gives you life.”
— @jarango” via @marshallk

I review what caught my attention in May and June 2024 on media tools and in my personal archives. Here are the insights.

Table of Contents

On Identities

“I don’t know what kind of career I want to forge for myself. But I want it to be one where I love the work that I’ve done. And I like to think that I have good instincts.” — Anya Taylor-Joy

“I don’t really feel like I belong anywhere, which makes me belong everywhere.” — Anya Taylor-Joy

George Miller‘s latest movie, Furiosa, was such a treat to see in the cinema.

“How right it is to love flowers and the greenery of pines and ivy and hawthorn hedges; they have been with us from the very beginning.” – Vincent Van Gogh via Meredith Lewis

“i do not know what it is about you that closes and opens; only something in me understands the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses.” – e.e. cummings from ‘somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond via Meredith Lewis

“I like to bundle SWOT analyses into my PESTLEs. There’s always possibilities we can’t predict. Good ol VUCA!” – @ddrrnt

On Focus

“Planning, daydreaming, predicting, worrying, reflecting, or anticipating add up to time we spend thinking about what isn’t going on around us.

Contemplating or re-experiencing events that have happened in the past = retrospection.

Thinking about what might happen in the future = prospection.

The part I find interesting is that animals can mull over events they’ve experienced before. But only humans can think about the possible consequences of future events they’ve never experienced by stimulating the future in our minds. We are unique voyagers through time.” – Rachel Botsman

“The volume of our communication, and our unfettered access to information and other people, have made it more difficult than ever to focus. Despite this reality, there is another truth: Opportunities to focus are still all around us. But we must recognize them and believe that the benefit of focus, for yourself and the people you lead, is worth making it a priority in your life. In other words, before you can lead others, the first person you must lead is yourself.” – Mike Erwin

“Through books I was introduced to the world of Hayek, Machiavelli , Locke, Adam Smith, Hobbes and Rousseau as well as that of Tolkien and the beauty of ideas and language.

I will keep my hardcopy of books and make sure that my grandson can always read them so that the ideas contained therein are not ‘updated’ to reflect the mores of the time

I will always use it to ride that magic carpet over the seas to Cathay or into the vast reaches of space, armed with a notebook a comfy chair and a good cup of freshly brewed coffee.” – Andrew Trickett

I went back this spring and rediscovered Strasbourg, France’s first UNESCO World Book Capital, with great pleasure. You can listen to this podcast in French. Here is an excerpt:

“Reading is an indulgence that helps us grow”.

On Engagement

“Implicit in the language of engagement are the following behaviors:
Noticing
Validating
Supporting
Assuming Commitment
Seeking Understanding
Supporting
Promoting
Inviting
Empowering” – Rachel Happe

“Ecosystems emerge from platforms that provide safe spaces for collaborations to form. While we cannot manage ecosystems, we can manage the rules, activities, & participants on the platform. Japanese scholars Nonaka and Konno call these safe spaces “Ba”. – Ed Morrison

“To break free from analysis paralysis, it’s crucial to take the action step to move to “What will we do?” – Jane Rogan

What are you up to?

How and why to make a /now page on your site to work and learn out loud.

“Creativity: having the courage to finish. “Do the best work you can, forgive yourself for not doing what you wanted to do, and show your work.” – Meredith Lewis

“According to this paper #Serendipity is not merely about chance but is deeply intertwined with the proactive elements of triggering, connection, follow-up, and the capacity to perceive and capitalize on unexpected opportunities.” https://asistdl.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/asi.23273” – @ddrrnt

“(…) Twitter used to be the most wonderful platform for serendipity: Those gloriously off-piste encounters that lead to connections with people or events or ideas or content from all over the world that I doubt I would have found without social media, and especially Twitter.” – Meredith Lewis

“As Google+ was shattered end-user behavior, in general, changed across social media networks. Much of this change was sometime coming. The closure of Google+ didn’t materially affect it but it catalyzed some of it accelerating the process as rivals sprung up and decentralized networks started getting the upper hand (which has led to the rise of the fediverse).” – David Amerland

What is the Fediverse? It is explained by Common Craft in this video.

“A recent study on the customer (and fan) psychology associated with parasocial relationships highlights why social media is as necessary as it is tricky and why trust that’s so hard to build is also so easy to lose.” – David Amerland

On Super Skills

“Soft skills are the way for us to future-proof [/now-proof] ourselves & our workforce and drive sustainable success in the age of AI. Because our edge will always be human.” – Taruna Goel

“(…) “HCD is an umbrella term that covers the likes of design thinking (DT), User Experience design (UXD), customer experience design (CXD), and Learning Experience Design (LXD). They’re all variations of a theme, and that theme is that everyone provides a service to someone.”

“(…) In the age of AI, human centered design is a super skill because it puts people first. It ensures the numbers that the software crunches will provide intelligence to inform a decision that your customer needs to make. It ensures the process that the agent automates will service a need that your customer has. As the popular saying goes, it ensures your plane lands at the right airport. In this way, HCD is a soft skill that complements and galvanizes your suite of hard skills. It’s a super skill that not only empowers you among the robots. It also empowers you among your fellow humans with whom you compete for jobs, bonuses, and promotions.” – Ryan Tracey

I have completed the Human Centered Design Crash Course hosted by Ryan Tracey. Here is my review:

This is an excellent, clear, actionable and straightforward course. Each theme is well woven and provides a trigger to be ready before moving on to the next step.

I enjoyed walking through this learner experience and found it beneficial in strengthening my innovation muscles and being more consistent when it comes to figure out and level up fellow newbie innovators.

Happy Summertime

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June 20, 2024/0 Comments/by Rotana Ty

Futures Thinking

Futures Thinking Caught my Attention

Table of Contents

“As we see the future, so we act; as we act we become.” — Barbara Marx Hubbard via Gerd Leonhard

Learning, Community Management, Personal Knowledge Mastery, and Futures Thinking.

I explore and am passionate about those disciplines.

I think my curiosity for futures thinking started when I was followed by Gerd Leonhard (@gleonhard) on Twitter.

By the way here is below Gerd’s podcast episode how he started to become a futurist.

Then I started diving into the blog posts on foresight by Venessa Miemis, especially this one: Essential Skills for 21st Century Survival: Part 4: Foresight.

Essentially, foresight the ability to see “the long view;” to look at information from the past and present, extract the patterns and lessons, and use them to inform decision-making in order to impact the direction things go into the future.

There are a range of tools for foresight, the most common being: environmental scanning, trend analysis, brainstorming, modeling, gaming, visioning, and scenario development.

Scanning was already covered earlier in this series, so here is a brief overview of the others.”

Let’s discover other perspectives and principles of foresight to develop the fundamentals of this discipline.

Futures Thinking Fundamentals

How about the principles for thinking like a futurist? Marina Gorbis, Executive Director of the Institute for the Future, introduced them in a blog post.

“In my twenty years at the Institute, I’ve developed five core principles for futures thinking:

Forget about predictions.
Focus on signals.
Look back to see forward.
Uncover patterns.
Create a community.“

She concludes her article with those thoughts:

“At its best, futures thinking is not about predicting the future; rather, it is about engaging people in thinking deeply about complex issues, imagining new possibilities, connecting signals into larger patterns, connecting the past with the present and the future, and making better choices today.

Futures thinking skills are essential for everyone to learn in order to better navigate their own lives and to make better decisions in the face of so many transformations in our basic technologies and organizational structures.

The more you practice futures thinking, the better you get.”

But how can we start to look at the world differently?

Futures Thinking with Fresh Eyes

“To look at the world differently is already to change the world.” — Werner Heinsenberg, physicist and inventor of quantum mechanics

Does foresight start with seeing the world through fresh eyes?

Here is a summary and sketchnote by Tanmay Vora of the article on this subject.

How can we go deep into futures thinking practices?

Futures Thinking – IFTF Specialisations & Community of Practice

Here are a few recommended ways I use and suggest:

Ready, Set, Future! Introduction to Futures Thinking.

Life After COVID-19: Get Ready for our Post-Pandemic Future.

Futures Thinking Specializations.

Urgent Optimists Community

I was awarded a yearly scholarship and got an invitation from IFTF to join the Urgent Optimists Global Community of practice hosted by Jane McGonigal, research director at IFTF. I was one of the founding members of the Urgent Optimists Community.

“Urgent Optimists is Institute for the Future’s first individual membership program.

We’re bringing together people who want to feel authentically hopeful about the future, and who are working to create positive transformation in society and in their own lives.”

Consider joining us to develop imagination, courage and deep collaboration skills.

Take a listen.

Your turn. How are you developing your futures thinking to stay relevant and ahead of the game?

Futures Thinking & Future Skills

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June 11, 2024/0 Comments/by Rotana Ty

Defrag

We write to reflect and to practice.

I reflect on the value of defragmenting and unifying our artefacts, our writings and ourselves in a fragmented world. Read on more in this post.

Defragmenting our Arfefacts

For past Winter holidays, I grabbed the Greenlights Journal by Matthew McConaughey. As he introduces:

“Greenlights: Your Journal, Your Journey is a guided companion to the memoir Greenlights, filled with prompts, pithy quotes, adages, outlaw wisdom, and advice on how to live with greater satisfaction.”

Sometimes it is not so easy to map our thoughts when we face the challenges of fragmented writing.

With personal knowledge mastery’s activities and tools I use, I don’t just write on one platform, but on many ones. From Slack to IM messaging tools. From my blog to a book. From Google Workspace to M365 documents and Clickup documents. Less and less on email. #NoEmail

Lately I have also been sharing a few thoughts on Mastodon and LinkedIn, one conversation at a time.

My crumbling of writings through blogging, microblogging, asynchronous and live chat is fragmented. I wonder.

How can I unify and streamline these streams of writing into one river of writing?

Grant Snider’s comic strip is full of stellar insights. Enjoy it.

Source: https://twitter.com/grantdraws/status/1456633131382054916

“To sketch what you observe is to change the tempo of your observation. It necessarily slows your sensemaking down, and sharpens what you see.” – Fiona Tribe

Rewind: The Learning Journey sketchnoted by Klara Loots and moi.

“Slowing down is important for deep observation and learning.” – Dibyendu De

Defragmenting our Writings

The other thing I notice is that my writing time is still an unplanned activity.

I don’t do it consistently. I’m aware of it.

“I thought of myself as like the jazz musician: someone who practices and practices and practices in order to be able to invent and to make his art look effortless and graceful.

I was always conscious of the constructed aspect of the writing process, and that art appears natural and elegant only as a result of constant practice and awareness of its formal structures.” – Toni Morrison

How do things work for me?

If I notice something, I might think about it. Do some research or not at all.

Then I would make a draft and sleep on it for a while. When I come back to it, I will refine the post before sharing it with my network on social or in person and through the online communities I engage with.

But it all starts with why I am writing.

“We write to taste life twice, in the moment & in retrospect.” – Anais Nin

I have a blogroll to engage with and read deep thoughts, shared experience, reflection and musings from bloggers around the world.

Being aware of ourselves. Noticing ourselves and trying to unify ourselves could begin by blogging on our own blog. But the challenge is to unify or defragment ourselves in a fragmented world. As I noticed in this old post:

In a fragmented world, we need to go deep; as Nilofer Merchant said:

“It’s a fragmented world. And it’s only becoming more so. It used to be that when people wrote, they wrote more deeply. In the early days of the web (pre-twitter), I remember hand picking the few voices I would listen to and then putting them into my RSS feeder and checking for their essays.

Essays, not tweets, were the way we shared what we were thinking. But as “content” has become more important to maintain a standing online, more and more people are entering into the fray. More and more people who may not even have a point of view to advocate but just want to participate in the conversation. ” — Nilofer Merchant

How can we go deep and defragment ourselves in a fragmented world?

Writing online is different from writing in other analog ways.

“Writing on the Web is a technology we are just starting to learn to use. While writing for the Web can be seen as formally and functionally close to writing for print, such a perspective deprives it of the opportunities hypermedia environments and its texts open for us to connect, understand and know more.

To write well on the Web, we need to be aware of the metamorphoses of text on the Web [link to a transcribed talk with Cruce Saunders: The Semantic Web and Linked Data with Teodora Petkova] and the world behind our looped writer’s and reader’s eye.” — Teodora Petkova

Defragmenting Ourselves

Like this post you are reading, I wrote a first draft a while ago. Then I slept on it until I got my blogging mojo back. Because I read a good recent post by Meredith:

“That put me in mind of this quote that I found somewhere on my internet travels:

“Each person is to build his or her soul by bringing the widely scattered elements of experience into a unified whole.” – Ilia Delio

How do we unify those widely scattered elements of experience? We all have our own way of coming at that challenge, and, for me, I always turn to creativity and the arts” – Meredith Lewis

I carry on the conversation on Mastadon with Meredith on the topic of unifying/defragmenting ourselves.

@dangerousmeredith A fine piece, Meredith. You made me think. My pen pal, Daniel Durrant wrote in a conversation in 2015 this:

“A network of fragile fragmented selves gains from disorder and evolves as we become aware of their failures.”

Your latest and his thoughts made me mull over.

How can we defragment our fragmented selves in a fragmented world?

As Daniel wasn’t on Mastodon for this conversation, we’ll continue it with Meredith on Twitter. Especially as I revisited this oldie “A Networked Community of Fragmented ‘Selves” by Dibyendu De, which is fully of nudges to ponder:

“What happens if the ‘selves’ weren’t aware of each other?

What happens if the selves simply knew each other well enough to form a community of strongly networked selves that help each other grow?

What happens if a person tries to create or design synergy between different selves?

How does one become a better spectator and player in the networked community of human society that constantly interacts with nature – both within and without?“

March is a very special month for me. Every year a cascade of deep thoughts, events and movements happen at the same time. As I have blogged:

March. Is it the month when I am in motion, exploring, activating, rewinding my journey, updating my toolkit, staying curious, colliding, asking myself why, innovating, developing new capabilities and mindset, and embracing the unknown.

Keep it real.

Happy Spring.

Defragmenting with the Tapestry Book

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March 20, 2024/0 Comments/by Rotana Ty

Summer Explorations

Potential and Conversational

Did you have a pleasant summer? Do you enjoy Fall ?

Please find below my summer explorations: exhibitions and cities. Enjoy.

Table of Contents

Le Havre & Exhibits

Source: By Martin Falbisoner – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=82036024

I previously visited Le Havre and fell in love with this Normandy seaside town once again this summer. Take a look at this Les Ambassadeurs’ city exploration. I’m particularly fond of the architectural style and flair by French architect Auguste Perret, who has left his imprint not just on Le Havre, but also on Paris and Amiens. It exudes charm, refreshment, modernity, class and boasts impressive architecture.

The present displays, ‘Un été au Havre‘ in certain artistic locations both inside and outside the buildings, are splendid and captivating regardless of whether it is sunny or rainy.

Were you aware of this?

“Paris, Rouen, Le Havre, une seule et même ville dont la Seine est la grande rue.” – Napoléon Bonaparte, premier Consul. Le Havre, le 8 novembre 1802.

Translated:

“Paris, Rouen, Le Havre, a single city with the river la Seine as its main street.” – Napoleon Bonaparte, First Consul. Le Havre, 8 November 1802.

Dublin, Howth, Malahide

In the ‘Amateur Traveler’ podcast, Chris Christensen and his guest discuss about travelling to Dublin, Ireland.

According to them, Dublin acts as the gateway to the rest of Ireland and is renowned for its welcoming atmosphere.It is also a compact city which allows tourists to easily visit all the prominent and lesser-known sites in just three days.

This is what I experienced during the transition from Summer to Autumn in three cities. The highlights of my trip included listening to traditional Irish music at O’Donoghue’s in Dublin, wandering through the medieval castle and gardens of Malahide, which is a fortress spread over 105 hectares of parkland, adorned with antiques, paintings and a fairy trail, and exploring Howth. See below a photo of the stunning landscape I photographed while hiking on a sunny and gusty morning.

Exhibit Busan, the world at your fingertips, the Korean Cultural Center, Paris

I continue to develop my curiosity for Asia through my intrigue with Busan, the Korean city, and and its culture, which I explored through an exhibit I attended in Paris.

“The exhibition you’re going to see will help you explore various aspects of this southern city, which is less known than the influential Seoul, but just as appealing and vibrant. Discover the locals who, despite the twists in history, have managed to keep their bubbling optimism alive. The Korean Cultural Centre invites you to ride the wave and delve into a culture that has been greatly influenced by foreign elements.

Divided into two main sections, this exhibition gives a broad overview of what has made and represents Busan. Firstly, a first section presents its history and identity. Then, a second chapter takes over by revealing an exciting cultural part.”

Nantes & Third place

Source: https://www.iledenantes.com/operations/hangar-a-bananes/

I am fascinated by the futures of workplace and third places that supercharge work and collective learning. During this summer, I had the pleasure of discovering and relishing such a third place in Nantes, France.

“The Hangar à bananes, an old port wasteland located on the western tip of the Isle of Nantes, has become one of the most iconic entertainment venues in Nantes since 2007. Over the years, bars, restaurants, a nightclub, an art gallery (the Hab Galerie), and a theatre have been established there.”

Exhibit Le Paris de Gustave Eiffel (1832-1923), Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine, Paris

I thoroughly enjoy the architectural exhibition that showcases the works of Gustave Eiffel. The exhibition is brimming with intricate details and highlights his remarkable accomplishments, which have left an enduring legacy in France.

“To mark the centenary of the death of the “iron magician”, the Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine is unveiling another facet of the genius’s career.

He is known the world over for his famous 300-metre-high “Iron Lady”. But who knows about his department stores, his synagogue, his church or his secondary school? The Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine, located in the Palais de Chaillot, is revealing a completely different facet of the illustrious architect’s career with its exhibition The Paris of Gustave Eiffel. To mark the centenary of the death of Gustave Eiffel (1832-1923), the builder’s sometimes overlooked achievements in Paris are presented. Behind six of them, only the most initiated know the imprint of the genius.” – translated from the article from Le Figaro

Your turn. What do you explore over this Summer?

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August 21, 2023/0 Comments/by Rotana Ty

Hosting a Soft Skills Workshop

Learning

On 21st October 2022, I hosted a three-hour in-person workshop with a local French partner in Le Grand Paris, France. It was fun, energizing and insightful. Discover my debriefing below.

Table of Contents

Participants of the Soft Skills Workshop

Thirteen French solopreneurs from diverse sectors who activate and propel their soft skills.

As a workshop host, I invited the cohort:

To discuss the need for soft skills development over a monthly offline community chat.
To share knowledge and encourage conversations between participants on this topic.

Active Pedagogy

As a proponent of social learning, learning by moving, doing and reflecting, I turned the room into three or four pods of tables and chairs before the participants entered the room. To do so, I arrived twenty minutes before the kick-off of the workshop and got some help from the staff of my workshop’s partner. I intended to nudge the participants upon their arrival to go to a pod and later to be in a group of three or four.

This set the right conditions for forming a peer learning circle with listening, caring, sharing knowledge and reflection. As a host, my role was to suggest assigning roles (master of inclusion, master of time, master of production). Turning solopreneurs who barely know each other into teams of possible collaborators and fellow active learners.

Hosting the Soft Skills Workshop

Debriefing the Soft Skills Workshop

To Monitor

The roundtable was longer than expected: 20 minutes instead of 10. Leaving the floor to each participant to introduce themselves take time while being the time master as a host.

Leaving more time and space per team to get to know each other and collaborate on a precise and expected deliverable: the top skills and ways to activate and develop them as solopreneurs.

Welcoming, onboarding and offboarding the workshop participants with a few introductory words, smiles, tea and coffee. This is how, as I host, I show I care.

Setting up the workshop room with four pods of tables and chairs before the arrival of participants is physical and takes time. Next time, perhaps, invite the participants to do so, as well as a first collective effort.

After the workshop, the follow-up communication between moi and the local partner was ok. The participants got an actionable version of the deck I used to animate, and a few connected and carried on the conversation via Linkedin.

Matters Raised

The projection of the deck on the wall was too small sometimes to read the sources and small typography I added from my research and curation on soft skills and future skills.

No wifi in the room. Only smartphone connection. I did not need to use the Internet to host this workshop. The participants use their mobile to pull links and get inspiration on this topic per team. Fine.

Go Further: Future Skills²

You may enjoy the below oldies on soft skills and future skills.

Strengths Building

Future Skills

Latest research from the World Economic Forum: Future of jobs 2023: These are the most in-demand skills now – and beyond

What are your top five future skills?

What resources do you use to activate them?

Did you enjoy this post? Check out Future Skills.

January 8, 2023/0 Comments/by Rotana Ty

High Momentum

Curated, Learning, Working

High momentum. As winter approaches and the year nears its end, I am reminded of Albert Camus’ quote, “In the middle of winter, I discovered in myself an invincible summer.” With only one month left, some may be tempted to coast to the finish line, but a strong finish can make the entire year feel like a success.

What can you do in the next thirteeen days to build momentum and finish the year on a high note? It also encourages me to do a retrospective or futurespective of the year 2022 that has passed by so rapidly. How about yourself?

high momentum élan normandie plage apprentissage organisation éducation coopération

A photograph I took whilst walking along a beach in Normandy, France.

Table of Contents

High Momentum 1: Workplace Futures

Visual Communication

“From this perspective, personalized interior design is a marketing tool for customers, prospects, partners and employees. It inspires confidence and seriousness and helps distinguish the company’s physical site from its competitive environment.” ― Les Echos Solutions

It is a key aspect of the staff experience, corporate branding, and workplace futures design.

Business Management

“Conversely, managing in the digital age is about enabling staff to bring value to customers. Making money is the outcome of a business model, not its goal.

Horizontal interactions are just as important as vertical communications. Leadership is present throughout the company and continuous innovation is central.” ― Forbes France

Please read my insights and observations from my professional network, covering leadership and beyond, including community engagement.

The Duality of Agility

“Hence it may be helpful to think of small “a” agile as an adjective and big “A” Agile as a noun; bearing in mind that big “A” Agile might also be used as an adjective to describe a person, place or thing that adopts the methodology.

Regardless, some of our peers rail against Agile as a redundant neologism. As with other trends such as Design Thinking, they argue it’s merely old world practices repackaged in a new box. It’s what we’ve always done and continue to do as consummate professionals.

But I politely challenge those folks as to whether it’s something they really do, or rather it’s something they know they should do.

If a new box helps us convert best practice into action, I’m a fan.” ― Ryan Tracey

“Agile” is a mindset comprised of beliefs, principles, practices, processes, and approach for effective thinking and execution. Constant development, iteration and reflection are integral to our continuous learning process.

High Momentum 2: Learning Futures

Community Fundamentals

“Explore the fundamentals of online community management through this eight-session course. Perfect for those new to the field of online community management, or anyone looking to brush up on the foundations of community.

This course includes eight sessions, with associated quizzes and worksheets, covering these topics:

Community Management Definitions

Community Strategy

Community Technology

Community Personas

Community Content and Programs

Kickstarting Online Engagement

Building Community Value

Measurement and Reporting

This course is designed for professionals working with both internal (employee) and external (brand, marketing, and support) community types.” ― TheCR Academy

As an internal community specialist, I continue honing my skills following my activations and certifications from the Community Roundtable Academy last year. Please stay tuned for my future updates on the insights I gained during this certified programme.

Why organizations don’t learn?

“And at a core level, the Fundamental Attribution Error (i.e. it’s probably not about or directed at you)” ― Rachel Happe

How do you develop your learnability skills now?

The role of reflection when students cooperate

“Thus, the systematic request for feedback on each session, involving reflection on specific points, has made it possible to establish a dialogue between teacher and students: the course itself becomes in a way a cooperative task. By agreeing to question themselves and to remain attentive to their students’ needs, the teacher who asks for feedback thus shows the model of the skills expected in group work.”― Élise Cantiran

Peer-to-peer evaluation and agile cooperation to continue learning together. I explore this through my work as a learning designer, trainer, and workshop host with an apprentice school.

Peer-to-peer evaluation and nimble collaboration to sustain ongoing learning. I explorer this through my role as a learner experience designer, teacher, and workshop host with an institution for apprenticeship.

Did you enjoy this post? Check out Future Skills.

December 5, 2022/0 Comments/by Rotana Ty

Propelling a Learner Experience

Learning, Top Posts

Fall is here. The switch between sunny days and rainy grey days is constant. The weather is still lovely and windy. Then, the leaves start falling, and I can see how the trees change while walking.

Like leaves that morph in different shades of colours, which personal growth evolutions have you noticed from Summertime to Fall?

It makes me think of teaching at a French apprenticeship school.

Table of Contents

Step by step

Teaching requires a lot of energy, patience and optimism.

Subjects covered include creative and innovative project management, business model innovation, digital project management, communication and marketing, entrepreneurship, IT and digital literacy.

Each session per course or workshop includes a deep dive, an individual or team activity, templates to use, a deliverable to produce, a space to drop the deliverable for evaluation, and resources to go further.

The content is integrated and shared in a dedicated Moodle space per cohort, one session at a time. The activities are done in-person or remotely, live or asynchronously.

For each course or workshop, I go through the same process.

Step 1: Scoping

The aim is to identify the specific profile for the learner experience. To do this, I answer the questions below related to the specific theme I will cover.

Question	Response	What’s in it for my learner experience?
Who is the person ? What is his/her profile?
What does he/she knows in the subject?
Any bias? Any wrong habits? What is he/she doing today that needs changing?
What’s in it for the learner?
How is the learner experience likely to be welcomed?

Step 2: Designing & integrating

This step is the one I enjoy the most.

I ask myself the following questions:

What changes do I expect?
What does a beginner do?
What does a skilled person do?
What do people find difficult?
What steps, situations or themes should learners have in mind and in practice?

To do this, I specify the learning moment, the suggested activity and the time spent for each learner’s goal.

My pedagogical sequence should contain more exercises than passive transmission. The activities must be spread out over time, and must include sufficient breaks. I start by setting aside these breaks.

I don’t forget to give reminders and alternate subjects.

A teaching sequence looks like this table and can have several teaching methods.

Learner Moment	Face-to-face learning approaches	Remote learning approaches
Self-assessement	Coaching session	Quizz
Deconstruction	Immersive session	Quizz
Content delivery	Course, book, practical guide, templates	Webinar, how-to, wiki
Practice	Role play, Learning by doing through innovative project co-design & development	Learning by doing though innovative project co-design & development
Reflection	Mentoring, knowledge sharing & co-creating workshop, book club, game cards, icebreakers	Forum, chat
Automation	Flashcard, Q&A in duo or trio, game cards, icebreakers	Icebreakers
Evaluation	Peer evaluation, exam	Quizz

It involves curating and connecting the dots between the knowledge I pull. From my blog, archives, environmental scanning, experiences, use cases, conversations and knowledge sharing from my network and the communities I engage. It takes time and involves sensemaking, content management and clarity. At the same time, use personalized templates from decks to sheets and documents.

Here is how I go each time: I create the outline, frame questions, share deep dives on basic skills, approaches or tools, roadmaps for an individual or collective activity to practice and reflect on, and resources to curate to go further.

Designing in-person live and asynchronous learner experiences is an individual craft. This work can also be done in collaboration.

“Rotana, a quality person, I particularly appreciate his calmness and, at the same time, his liveliness of mind. We built modules for apprentices BUT TC in the second year of their specialization.

The exchanges were fluid and fruitful, and we were able to build on each other’s skills.

He brings a lot of advice and tools that he proposes to his clients, and that favours the methodology.

A rich and relevant relationship: we were meant to work together.”
— Christine, Digital Learning Manager / Learning Designer

Once the outline and content are ready, I integrate them into a Moodle space so each class can explore it one session at a time.

Step 3: Coordinating

I am planning live and asynchronous sessions – remotely and in-person over months on the school’s learning portal, Clickup and my calendar. That way, I can anticipate which session is upcoming and has been hosted. Which time estimated and time done are per session to scope, design, host and review each session.

I often block slots on my calendar to dedicate time and energy to each step of managing pedagogical projects.

Step 4: Onboarding

Each course or workshop comprehends four to six sessions of three hours spread over several months.

To get an overview, I send an onboarding message to the class. In that way, they can save the dates in the calendar and know the intent, the skills to develop, the theme per session, the on-demand support, and the next step for the first session.

Step 5: Hosting

For each session, three possibilities

Possibility 1: Live session in-person

Hosting gatherings per cohort and team takes patience, refinement and practice. When it is in a physical classroom, I often start with the traditional setting of the space with tables and chairs in rows, especially when I introduce the session, take deep dive into an essential skill, approach or tools, show and explain, share instructions and tips to produce the expected deliverables.

Sometimes I use a wheel of names to nudge participants to share their experiences or Learning of the week collectively.

When it is time to gather and collaborate to co-create a deliverable per team, I invite the cohort to stand up and move the chairs and tables to bundle two tables with chairs around them to create a pod. In that way, they are in a better mindset and conditions to communicate, reflect and collaborate.

In addition, I often leave an empty chair on a pod to come, observe, jump into the conversation, share feedback and leave anytime during the session.

The roadmap per expected deliverable with the deadline and resources to use to produce it is always visible on the physical whiteboarding of the classroom. I project one of my slides with the instructions on it.

Possibility 2: Live session hosted remotely via Zoom

There are always five moments. The welcoming, the icebreaker, the collective moment in the same room, the activities and virtual peer assistance in breakout rooms, and the regrouping for a debrief and wrap-up.

How to foster conversation with remote learning and distributed work?

“If there are 120 people in the room and you set the breakout number to be 40, the group will instantly be distributed into 40 groups of 3.

They can have a conversation with one another about the topic at hand. Not wasted small talk, but detailed, guided, focused interaction based on the prompt you just gave them.

8 minutes later, the organizer can press a button and summon everyone back together.

Get feedback via chat (again, something that’s impossible in a real-life meeting). Talk for six more minutes. Press another button and send them out for another conversation.

This is thrilling. It puts people on the spot, but in a way that they’re comfortable with.

If you’re a teacher and you want to actually have conversations in sync, then this is the most effective way to do that. Teach a concept. Have a breakout conversation. Have the breakouts bring back insights or thoughtful questions. Repeat.

A colleague tried this technique at his community center meeting on Sunday and it was a transformative moment for the 40 people who participated.” — Seth Godin

Possibility 3: Asynchronous session guided remotely

The session is asynchronous. I use email, Google Chat, Google Meet, and Moodle to communicate and bring virtual assistance on demand. The apprentices are autonomous and often in teams to get the work done.

On the D-Day of each session, I provide a roadmap, templates and resources to go further via a programmed email. In that way, I am ahead and not drowned by the workflow.

The templates and resources to go further are canvases, tools, and questions to nudge apprentices and encourage them to share their inputs to create added value and share. Name a few: business strategic analysis tools, digital strategy map, personal business model canvas, whiteboarding, agile project management tool, brand identity and essence canvas, and marketing tactics.

Step 6: Supporting

I teach to share knowledge, questions, experience, and use cases and highlight the reflections, insights, deliverables and results brought by apprentices. I am also here to support, coach and level up each person regarding their strengths, skill set, IT and digital literacy, drive and leadership.

Providing links and resources before each course or workshop is another way to nudge the apprentices to be responsible for their learning and team projects. Especially when I am away, they are learning and working outside the school building.

Next steps: Evaluating, Debriefing, Improving

The following steps are evaluating, debriefing and improving a learning experience. Stay tuned for deep thoughts. In the meantime, here are actionable insights from my network:

“Teacher is a hierarchical title to approach learning with students. Go beyond that with coaching and not being above the students but at the same level as them. You learn among and with them.

Create the environment so that they learn and reflect, you encourage them to learn on their own, together by doing.” — Paul Simbeck-Hampson

I try to embrace what Harold Jarche shares in his post on modelling as the best way to teach:

“(…) With a standardized curriculum and constant testing, there is never enough time for most school students to fully learn. There is too much information and much of it is without context. But mastery often comes from modelling. It is how the apprentice becomes a journeyman and in time a master. It is not done in isolation.

The core method (of six main components) for the teacher/master in cognitive apprenticeship is modelling. This can be aided by external coaching and scaffolding, but it is up to the learner to spend time on articulation, reflection, and exploration. Developing mastery requires deliberate practice over time.“

Feedback

Feedback from Rotana Ty’s clients. Word cloud created by Rotana Ty.

Read more feedback from courses and workshops I hosted in person and remotely.

Propelling your learner experience

Did you enjoy this post? Check out Future Skills.

October 2, 2022/0 Comments/by Rotana Ty

Plurality

Audio, Curated

Pluarity of seasons.

Summertime is almost over. Fall is around the corner. I can’t wait to see the best of all Autumn.

leaves london learning engagement pluralité plurality autumn automne fall

A photo I took while walking through the London woods.

“We are plurality.

Our individuality is a temporary manifestation of relationships.

Relationships with the multitudes.”

“Ecosystems are built on the conversations between interdependent partnerships.

When we cut these conversations the ecosystems fall apart.

Without the network the single disappears.

The center, the fundamental, isn’t the single, the “self”, rather the network.” ― @FBanishoeib

Table of Contents

Plurality of Actionable Insights

Digital Sobriety

This excellent article by Livio Hughes, ‘As our world burns, is it time for digital sobriety‘ shared by Cat Barnard got me thinking and triggered the intent to include some habits and tips to reduce my carbon footprint. Even to tweet and write fewer posts.

“At the individual level, and in our private lives, there are many small actions we can take which, repeated at scale, can create powerful network effects. See for example some of the tips for reducing your digital carbon footprint here, here, here, and here.

Good luck to us all!”

Learner Experience Design

As I currently explore an opportunity to design a learning experience with one of my clients, I’ve been thinking about what needs to be included when creating effective and engaging learning experiences. The article ‘Professional Learning: Path to Agency and Impact’ by Melissa Elmer brings some insights and actions to take.

“My last post focused on the future of learning. I emphasized the necessity of community, content, and events becoming interdependent. All of that is true, and the designers of learning experiences should definitely design experiences with those interdependencies at the base of the design.”

(…) “Instead of creating slides aimed to deliver information spend time figuring out what questions need to be asked.

Instead of making a list of activities or a list of boxes to be checked, schedule some time for conversations around the questions.

Here’s the bottom line. If the learners check out, the organization loses and the people don’t notice or care. If the learners check-in, everyone wins. Organizations that figure out how to invite the learners to the learning and create the conditions for the people to have agency in the learning process have a better chance of having an impact on learning.

What will you do to create the conditions for learning?“

Leadership

Dear social ties in my network from the UK and the countries of the Commonwealth, my deep condolences. R.I.P. Queen Elizabeth II. Sending warm thoughts.

“Let us not take ourselves too seriously. None of us has a monopoly on wisdom.” ― Queen Elizabeth II, Christmas Broadcast in 1991 via @write2tg

“Queen Elizabeth is an amazing leader. She has a clear purpose to provide stability, validation, coherence, and a cultural touchstone for the UK and she has done so in service to the country. She is a great example of how leaders can quietly and modestly be strong.” ― @rhappe

Plurality of Nudges

Glorious Pasts

“What do you think glorious pasts mean for organisations?” asks David Ross.

My two cents: successes and failures, and learnings from them. Retrospectives or looking back to look forward. Community legacy, artefacts and contributions for a better world/organisation.

Creativity Skills

“What are creativity skills? asks Meredith Lewis.

Do you see yourself as curious, open-minded or imaginative? Read more in her post to figure out what may be your creativity skills and unique strengths.

Knowledge Sharing Muscles

“I miss the office chit-chat.” Sound familiar? Office banter is not the same in the era of distributed and remote work. Sharing knowledge and creating a personal connection with your team members requires a more conscious effort and learning to proactively tell about what you do and what you know.

In this bite-sized podcast episode, Luis Suarez shares his tips on how to grow your knowledge-sharing muscle and start creating conversations in your digital workspace.“

Hear the 14 minutes of Arado Podcast: Learning to share knowledge and create a personal connection when working remotely to become aware of your work habits and develop new ones.

Some notes I took while hearing Luis:

Check your plan to clarify your objectives and share them with others. Develop a concise one-liner to describe your event. Do it for your emails, tasks, and meetings, too.

Choose a topic that you are passionate about and be willing to share it. Shared knowledge is power and a muscle to build with practice. Prioritise what you want to share. Do so with discernment.

Facilitate serendipity to yourself and your peers. Become comfortable sharing knowledge. People will get back to you as they find your shares helpful.

Silos < distributed work = abundant and infinite knowledge.

Build your muscles by sharing knowledge daily—one or two sentences to post on social or your schedule. It becomes a reflective exercise in your workflow. It also becomes a learning exercise from one to many times per day.

Plurality of Future Skills

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September 9, 2022/0 Comments/by Rotana Ty

Summer Exhibits

Source: https://easyretro.io/templates/sailboat-exercise-sailboat-retrospective/

Summer exhibits I enjoy discovering.

Table of Contents

Exhibit ‘City, Architecture & Care’ by Cynthia Fleury at the Pavillon de l’Arsenal, Paris

I heard for the first time about Cynthia Fleury through a multidisciplinary and creative learning program I participated in in 2018. When I arrived at the Pavillon de l’Arsenal – second floor – I saw her name on the wall and recalled who she was as I read the introductory description of the exhibit.

The setting and the scene she put in place in a rectangular way and many corners and per theme make the whole experience a lovely artful, and pedagogical one. Moreover, it is informative, full of explanations, maps, photography, archives, graphs and quotes from specialists.

In the context of the pandemic, it is an important work to help us rethink spaces, living, working, playing and third spaces, life and death, hospitals, gardens and even boats in their purpose and usages. Her craft and art with fellow artists and experts are for the societal memory of the local and big shifts citizens encountered and coped with. Here are some shots I took as I wandered into the exhibit.

summer musings pavillon arsenal exhibit city archictecture care

Photos collage by Rotana Ty

Exhibit In the Banlieues: Oakland/Saint-Denis at the Pavillon de l’Arsenal, Paris

The second most significant exhibit is about two cities: Oakland, USA, and Saint-Denis, France. I enjoyed the artful transmedia experience with the similarities and diversity between the two unique cities. From street art, music influences, artful spots, festivals, history of inhabitants, lifestyles and societal movements, to name a few, that caught my eyes. Check out below some photos.

summer musings pavillon arsenal exhibit cities

Photos collage by Rotana Ty

Foundation Louis Vuitton, Paris

I went again on a Sunny day to one of my favourite places in Paris, the Foundation Louis Vuitton, which is at the intersection of elegance, architecture and contemporary art. My first time in this building was six years ago. Yet, I felt that this spot still has something unique and magnificent each time I enter the building, wandering over exhibits, around and outside the foundation, especially in the Jardin de l’Acclimatation.

Photos collage by Rotana Ty

Exhibit Fugues in Color at Foundation Louis Vuitton, Paris

“Fugues in Color” will present works through which paint is free to escape the limited scope of the canvas. Colours and shapes discover new freedoms as they consume the surrounding spaces, such as the walls, floor, and ceiling. The diverse variations of colour extend into the architecture in close interaction with the Frank Gehry-designed building, and include works by five internationally-renowned artists of various origins and generations.

The Fondation will present simultaneously the “Simon Hantaï – The Centenary Exhibition” from 18 May 2022.

The first exhibit I visited was about forms, flows, fluidity, fastness and breaking free. I enjoyed it very much.

Photos collage by Rotana Ty

Exhibit Simon Hantaï. The Centenary Exhibition at Foundation Louis Vuitton, Paris

“To celebrate the centenary of Simon Hantaï’s birth (1922-2008), the Fondation is organising an unprecedented retrospective exhibition, in collaboration with the Hantaï family, curated by Anne Baldassari. It includes more than 130 of Simon Hantaï’s works, many of which have never before been shown, and the majority of which are large format works from 1957 to 2000.

Simultaneously, the Fondation will present “Fugues in Color” exhibition, in which paint is free to escape the limited scope of the canvas.”

I enjoyed the second exhibit crowded, hypnotic, intriguing, all about patterns and colourful again.

Photos collage by Rotana Ty

Happy Summer!

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June 16, 2022/0 Comments/by Rotana Ty

Navigating project management

Audio, Working

Table of Contents

Navigating Project Management to cope with uncertainty

I listened to an episode of : The Project Chatter Podcast, Project management under conditions of inherent uncertainty with Dave Snowden on the recommendations of Anne-Marie Rattray.

Here are my notes.

Knowledge Management & Narration

Knowledge management is about creating the conditions for innovation or improving decision-making. It is not about making knowledge explicit.

Head -> mind -> orality -> use of hands. Knowledge flows.

Apprentice: learning knowledge after ten years’ experience. You also develop knowledge through narrative knowledge. Become an expert in storytelling.

We are rich in data but poor in knowledge. Real deep knowledge is found in failure stories, not success stories. Institutionalise mistakes to learn.

Unfortunately, few people know how to tell stories. They only talk about anecdotes.

What skills do you use to make a decision?

Artefacts? For your story. Discover meaning and knowledge instead of telling a story.

Process Mapping & Organisational Networks

How powerful can informal social networks be?

Informal and formal networks at IBM. Digital environment.

Give people space for context-free, informal information networks. Don’t try to formalise informal networks.

Simply allow people to create trust and knowledge entanglements with informal networks across silos.

Concentrate on stimulating social networks. Look for something that resembles a spider’s web.

Create a process map. Reveal and show reality. Get closer to the organisation’s self-awareness.

Beyond AI

This is not AI, but machine learning. What are the data sets behind it? Change the rules, and the computer takes time to adapt, whereas a human is quicker.

The focus is on creating AI learning datasets. Feed the machine content, but leave the final decision to humans, not the machine.

Complexity management.

Project & Risk Management

Complex adaptive system = entangled system. The science of uncertainty with different domains: systems thinking and complexity thinking linked to nature.

Project architecture: not everything is ordered.

Uncertainty needs to be managed through risk orders. Use a cascade approach, even for highly structured projects.

You can use MVPs and time block management to manage project constraints.

SCRUM = a preliminary technique for iterating and improving IT projects.

The fast iterative parallel hypothesis to work on?

Multi-ontology approach: identify coherent and parallel hypotheses in complex problems. Keep a parallel track.

Creating the Conditions for Successful Project Management

You can’t deconstruct a complex system to solve a complex problem. Use the scaffolding approach instead. Don’t over-design.

Create emergent properties. Build the basic scaffolding in a project before using it extensively – no need to copy it or be certified in agile.

Start with where the people are. Map them, map the knowledge. Use people as sensors and signal detectors.

The Future of Consulting

Stop using the concept of transformation to set up a consultancy service. Consultants are butterflies; they pollinate.

Consultants must bring expert knowledge and perspectives. 1-5 learning model. Beyond that, partners become vendors. Consultants must return to fertilisation. The strategy is retroactive.

Mega-changes & Micro-questions

The pandemic: we won’t get rid of it just yet. The next ten to fifteen years will be marked by massive disruption and more rapid migration of methods. Extreme discontinuity and uncertainty.

Where complexity is critical, make climate change and micro-issues concrete and understandable to people.

Quickly increase your options for better decision-making on the climate change crisis.

Bounces in Project Management

Project management has more extensive options for making them actionable – anticipatory thinking. Multiple failures are an ability developed by those who produce them, like in Star Trek. Fail fast, learn fast.

Spend a whole day failing. Scrutinise more when you fail than when you succeed. Capture the lessons. Work on your attitude.

Uncertainty: you can’t prevent or eliminate it. You can’t manage complexity. You can’t control it. Navigate it.

Complexity in Project Management

Complexity is built into projects. Create artefacts to deal with it.

Find inspiration in a wide range of activities:

– Read science fiction books and company reports.
– Avoid management books on complexity, except scientific books.
– Read physics books.
– Avoiding neo-generalism, and concentrating on true generalism.
– See the links that others don’t see.
– Take any page of a book or document, and immediately see its meaning.
– Read the original, not the summary of a book.

Collective Project Management

Do without a project manager and replace him or her with a dedicated project management team.

The captain can change. There’s a job for everyone. Everyone can pass the ball.

Navigating & Debriefing with the Sailboat Retrospective

Do you use this practice to set a common course and debrief any project you’re working on?

What if each of your teams set a common course? ⛵

The sailboat retrospective helps you to set a common goal using the metaphor of a sailboat. The elements that make up the retrospective are :

The destination 🏝️

How will you promote and share the overall results of your project?

The anchor ⚓

What are the obstacles preventing you from achieving this?

The wind 💨

What’s propelling you in the right direction?

The rocks 🪨 / the iceberg 🧊

What potential risks do you face?

The sun 🔆

What makes you feel good?

Steps for drawing up your sailing retrospective as a team

Discuss each element with my team.
Summarise in a sketchnote.
Alternative: use a template from Clickup or Trello – table view.
Use this common heading.
Interact in a friendly manner. Reinforce each other’s learning with your learning team.
Get your project to a safe harbour.

It’s up to you and your captain and crew! ⛵

gestion de projet naviguer incertitude sailboat retrospective rétrospective voilier

Navigating Project Management with Future Skills

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June 6, 2022/0 Comments/by Rotana Ty

Nudge

Working

Table of Contents

Nudge: what is it?

“In English it means ‘nudge’, that little gesture you make to encourage someone to pay attention to what they’re about to say or do.

In French it would be translated as “coup de pouce“.

Applied to economics, it means a small intervention in our environment that modifies the mechanisms of choice, i.e. people’s behaviour, to influence them in a direction that better corresponds to their own interest or to the general interest.” ― France Culture

Here are three nudges shared by my international network to help you grow.

Nudge #1 for growing: get away from your desk 🖥️

Find out what Jenny Weigle, independent strategic consultant for online communities, does.

“I hear it from just about every one of my clients. “I’m burnt out.” Or “I’m so sick of virtual.” Or “I know it’s important, but I just don’t have any time to think on this.”

I’ve felt these same sentiments at one time or another over the last year, which is why I knew I needed something to benefit my mental health and productivity. Want to know what I did to improve things? I chose to walk away from my desk.*

(…)

Affordable Change-It-Up Day Ideas

Work from home? Do you know someone else near you who also works from home? Arrange a day to invite that person to work from your home, sharing the living room, dining room, or outdoor space. And then next month, go to that person’s home.

In short, you’re creating your own coworking environment without all the costs of going to a coworking space.

Grab a notebook and pen and take yourself to your favorite hike or park.

Find a place where you can sit and reflect on a work issue, and take note of your thoughts and any action steps.

Go for a drive. Turn on a relevant podcast, or a reflective playlist, and see where the road (and your mind) takes you.” — Jenny Weigle

What is Change-It-Up Day? Jenny writes:

“It is not a replacement for seeking serious mental health help, nor will it make all of your worries go away. It IS a welcome and necessary break that, so far, has already proven to feed my brain and provoke my curiosity. That’s exactly what I need these days.”

Your turn. How do you give yourself a break?

“I try to be like a forest: revitalizing and constantly growing.” — Forest Whitaker #Cannes2022

You may also enjoy my oldie on navigating knowledge flows.

Nudge #2 for growing: instigating climate change🌍

I’ve discovered the Carbon Almanac, “the powerful tool to help us create change, right here and right now”, thanks to a LinkedIn live hosted by Seth Godin and Cat Barnard, co-owner of Working the future.

Cat is also a fellow seeker from the Perpetual Beta Coffee Club. We engage monthly over a coffee chat with other community members.

I found fascinating and highly valuable the work that this global community did through the release of a book.

I intend to read and resources I look forward to digging into. As I am teacher for an apprenticeship school since September, I also consider using those resources and the educator’s guide with apprentices.

As put on the website:

“We are called to be architects of the future, not its victims.” — R. Buckminster Fuller

Nudge #3 for growing: working online & thinking out loud 👥

“Online, asynchronous, and transparent work not only captures knowledge better than meetings, it increases flexibility and suits many peoples’ needs/preferences #SocialNow” — @rhappe

“Instead of just working out loud, I encourage reflecting and thinking out loud, which is something I do regularly #SocialNow” — @rhappe

You may also enjoy this post by Gaylin Jee on hybridity in which there are five pointers/questions to trigger conversation on the present of work.

Nudge for growing – Future Skills

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May 22, 2022/0 Comments/by Rotana Ty

Feeds

Curated, Learning, Self Development

Table of Contents

Following up on my latest post, ‘Seeds’, I continue to share my working and learning out’s activities for the past few weeks with a new post.

“Seed, feed, weed and breed.” — @Quinnovator & Dave Ferguson

Question #1

“What does hybrid work mean to you?” asks @rhappe

Embracing synchronous and asynchronous ways to collaborate, co-create and cooperate within a distributed organization, team, network, and community – F2F and online.

Rachel Happe also tweeted:

“I like that definition a lot. Many miss the important place of asynchronous work.

I am finding that some people define hybrid as everyone remote most of the time, some as everyone comes to the office a few days a week, and the best are rethinking HOW they work.”

And this tweet:

“I was thinking recently about meeting roles and how all participants should have one (to make it a collaboration vs a presentation) and in those situations make one person in the room responsible for one person joining remotely to ensure they are included and can participate”

Question #2

“Community professionals, what do you do to either give yourself a break or to refresh your creativity and productivity?” asks @jenny_community

I disconnect to find and connect the dots. Biking and walking, going to art exhibits, listening to music, watching movies/sports/fashion shows/documentaries, engaging in weekly or monthly community chats, and resting.

Question #3

How do you focus in a fragmented world?

“Is ‘not well’ an answer?

Otherwise, good network management hygiene, email tagging rules, and a structured notebook/planner to set intentions every day.” — @EngagedOrgs

Excellent practices—a blend between manual and automated efforts for the win.

For example, for setting daily/weekly intentions, I find it helpful to use Clickup and time blocking in my calendar to stay focused and manage better my energy.

Inner Development Goals (IDGs)

“Creativity is a mindset, an attitude, a way of life. It could also be seen as a set of habits. If you want to bring your creativity to the fore, then explore ways of bringing it into your life in myriad small acts” — Meredith Lewis

At the end of April, I participated in the online workshop ‘Wayfinding: Traveling between imagination and agency with the IDGs’, hosted by Meredith Lewis, Professional Listener. Serendipitist. Pamphleteer. Fascinating conversation collectively and in the breakout room with fellow smart creatives worldwide.

Thanks to Meredith again for hosting this gathering exceptionally. I very much enjoy the experience. She created the successful conditions and atmosphere to make insights and creativity emerge.

As she shared with us following up on the workshop, the IDGs website has excellent resources and information, including the deck she used, which is free for anyone to download and use.

IDGs skills framework future development creativity

Source: IDGs website https://www.innerdevelopmentgoals.org

Great. That is useful for hosting workshops on those skills.

In her IDGs blog post series, Meredith shares her thoughts and creative prompt for one of the sub-skill of each skills family. Here are below my thoughts and activities through my tweets, posted and upcoming in my stream:

#IDGs Being (Relationship to Self)

“How does the universe speak to you?

Which moments help you to ‘see’ yourself and, simultaneously, to see your place within the universe?”

Through activations & learning moments #WCIW

#IDGs Thinking (Cognitive Skills)

“Whose vision of the future do I want those who have yet to be born to be living in?” #WCIW

Workplace Futures

Learning futures

Futures thinking²

#IDGs Relating (Caring for Others & the World)

“(…) recall the last convo you participated in that was attended to with imagination and devotion.” #WCIW

A fantastic community explorers chat two weeks ago.

#IDGs Collaborating

“Who expanded your horizons? When? How?

Do U show others “new music”? Do U feel able to – why or why not?” #WCIW

Explorers

Insights patternists

Neo-generalists

#IDGs Acting (Driving Change)

“How did you come to the #IDGs Framework – what was your point of entry?” #WCIW

Thanks to you, @DangerousMere, on Twitter & via your newsletter ;-)

+ A 21st Century skills project a few years ago

Curated feeds

“If creativity is about connecting dots, then you need to be intentional about collecting dots. As individuals, we have to continually expand our reference points, as teams, we have to deliberately curate conversations.” – Jillian Reilly

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May 1, 2022/0 Comments/by Rotana Ty

Seeds

Leadership, Self Development

“The first bud of spring sings the other seeds into joining her uprising.” ― Amanda Gorman

Happy Spring!

Enjoy below some gems I notice through my network and beyond.

Table of Contents

On Blogging

“Why do you blog? What is your strategy behind blogging? What do you blog about?” — @bill_slawski

“I blog to make sense. These are often half-baked ideas. Over time my blog has become my outboard brain. I blog mostly for myself. I write about learning, work, complexity, democracy, innovation, etc. My strategy over 18 years is just to write — http://jarche.com/blog” — @hjarche

“Same :) Blogging since 2008 for myself!” — @write2tg

“To explore new territories (semiotic trails)“ — @TheodoraPetkova

“I blog to learn. Every article I publish is an opportunity to dig deeper into a subject, simplify something complex, or clarify something confusing.” — @JonasSickler

I blog to research. Sometimes I turn the crème de la crème of posts into a book.

I blog to share deep thoughts about what caught my attention. I blog to observe ideas from interesting people, and to anchor/revisit stories, experiences, and practices.

Communities Engagement

Entrepreneurs Grand Jury

Being a Grand Jury member for the yearly Students-Entrepreneurs Contest Pépite made me engage locally with the academic and entrepreneurial ecosystem.

It was refreshing to hear work in progress and learnings from young instigators in higher education, construction, community building, social services, and environmental services. I am still pondering Silicon Valley’s model to build and scale startups.

Urgent optimism

According to Jane McGonigal, urgent optimism is a mindset and a practice. It combines mental flexibility, realistic hope and future power/actions for self-efficacy and collective efficacy. In addition, imagination, courage and deep collaboration skills are activated.

To practice and develop urgent optimism, I have been learning with a global community of urgent optimists/futurists since March 2022.

Travelling in Norway

I’ve enjoyed a few days off to Oslo, Norway and a few Norwegian cities one hundred miles away to hike in the woods and mountains, stroll in Oslo’s boroughs, and explore historical museums.

Great views from the Operahuset, Holmenkollen, and Sognsvann. I enjoyed walking in the boroughs of Vulkan, Bla, Vigeland and Frogner. Discovering Fredrikstad was quite an adventure!

It was refreshing and uplifting to travel and explore abroad again during the pandemic. But it felt weird and risky, too.

Next: Feed.

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April 7, 2022/0 Comments/by Rotana Ty

March

“It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.” ― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

March. The month between the Lunar New Year and the Cambodian New Year. The month of World Futures Day. The month in which the world lives in uncertain and strange times with the pandemic and the crisis in Europe.

So what is the present and futures of Europe look like? Feeling powerless, so sad. What can we do?

We can donate and help, we can educate ourselves, we can make sense in networks, and perhaps activate our urgent optimism.

March. Each year, 8 March is International Women’s Day. I am so grateful for the women in my network and the communities of practice I engage.

Thank you for your empathy, kindness and nudges. Thank you for your questions, actionable insights and support. Thank you for your boldness, uniqueness, resilience and elegance.

Thank you for your exploration, curiosity, creativity, beauty and artistry. Thank you for your humour, ingenuity, vulnerability, attention, vibrancy, and energy.

Especially: Jillian Reilly, Klara Loots, Taruna Goël, Anne Marie Rattray, Ariele Good, Meredith Lewis, Delphine Hervot, Giliane Tardy, Sophie Villeneuve, Stéphanie Borniche, Anne Kazuro, Céline Schillinger, Helen Blunden, Jane McGonigal, Lieselotte König, Jane Hart, Marcia Conner, Rachel Happe, Sahana Chattopadhyay, Trish Wilson, Josie Gibson, Anne Ditmeyer, Cat Barnard, Jenny Gordon, Karilen Mays, Mara Tolja, Jennifer Sertl, Kare Anderson, Selma Crauser, Maëlys Longeac, Shirley Rivera, Jeanne Guilbert, Sibel Kilic, Ombeline Lenoble, Kéren Massamba, Emeline Toupry, Loélia Martins Babayou, Léa Jovic, Julie Kouassi, Louna Bourras, Charline Fournet, Sophie Dayon, Jade-Mengue Ateba, Tiffany Taleb, Catherine Lebon, Rita Meghdessian, Anaëlle Jorré, Christine Vaillant, Lallie Charrier, Célia Molieres, Zelal Kahraman, Manel Chaouali, Charlene Akichy, Maryse Sangarin, Léa Manyoo, Laurianne Despierre, Clara Machaj, Marion Guillerm, Sylvie Brion, Angélique Bour, Estelle Morin, Frédérique Dussaillant, Kate Ensor, Sarah Labyed, Nour Fanich, Bérénice Imbs, Nayah Yamarké.

As I put in this post last year:

The 8th March was also International Women’s Day. I am so grateful to women in my network and inspiring, who keep exploring and learning, supportive, impactful, thoughtful, helpful and respectful, along with my learning and work shifts.

I also watched the documentary from Yann Artus-Bertrand called ‘Woman ‘, which is beautiful and powerful, methinks.

March. The month when Spring will come. I can see how nature evolves and bloom when I go for a walk or a bike ride. The month of the release of The Batman movie, which goes back to the noir roots.

March, the month of the last brand new music opus of Stromae – Multitude, the Oscars ceremony, NCAA March Madness 2022, the Paralympics Winter Games, the SXSW festival and conference, the release of the Resilience Tech Report.

March. Is it the month when I am in motion, exploring, activating, rewinding my journey, updating my toolkit, staying curious, colliding, asking myself why, innovating, developing new capabilities and mindset, and embracing the unknown.

“I love March as it gives me hope that new beginnings are always beautiful” ― Anamika Mishra

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March 6, 2022/2 Comments/by Rotana Ty

Embracing a Community

Community Management

Summary

This post discusses the journey and experience of joining and participating in a community of practice. It highlights the importance of pre-launch activities such as invitations and resource sharing. The write-up also outlines the elements of a successful community program, including a website, introductory blog posts, videos, and continuous engagement activities. It emphasizes the need for tailored, human-centered engagement strategies over rigid program designs.

Embracing a Community

Before the pandemic, when we took a flight or onboarded a boat to travel from point A to B, we could feel the experience from the crew ship. On the same wavelength does this experience feel like going to the hospital when we join, are onboarded, welcomed, introduce ourselves, and are supported in a community of practice?

A community journey and experience kick start before the community is launched through an invite, resources sent in advance before the experience of an online platform and an engagement program or a learning program. For example, the invite to join a safe and trusted place to gather and do with fellow professionals focused on a location, field, profession, industry, or around shared values can be the starting point activated by the community host.

Before the invite, we may have met the host in person or online to get to know the person and the willingness to start a community for a specific purpose. Is it to learn together? To make sense together of a field, a theme, the world. To co-create? To support each other’s back?

Once we have joined the community, we may be welcomed, introduce ourselves, get an onboarding kit, and start connecting with fellow members on the platform with profiles, asynchronous chats, and many events – from workshops, live chats, meetups, hackathons, Q&A, coaching sessions, labs.

Another step is the community program. To keep levelling up our professional and personal practices and even change them. To know better ourselves and collectively, to find questions and answers on what we have deep inside us, inside out. To meet members on the same or divergent paths in their journeys, projects, and problems to make sense, activate or let go of.

A community program is shaped before, during and after it is run and hosted by the community program manager or many if there is a team behind-the-scenes and in the trenches. So, what does shape a community program? One that is appealing, engaging, and tailored to the member’s needs and contributions? Made by the community program management team and the community members for the members. I noticed from my experience in producing or participating in a few community programs – whether it is a coaching program, an ambassador program, a learning program – that they often have the following elements:

A website, a brochure with the goal, the program, the conditions, the modalities, the price, the host, and the type of participants expected.

An introductory blog post to clarify the why, what, when, where, how, who and what’s in it for me.

A promotional LinkedIn post or tweet to share the tagline and gain traction.

A short video to present the program by the community director.

Those assets can trigger in cascade:

Curiosity was aroused by the program’s benefits, skills, conditions, schedule, and pedagogy.

Willingness to join the cohort and meet the host, the white wolf in the discipline.

Desire to join the program and platform + to get the handbook if one is provided.

Engagement to do the community activities and contribute through curation and production of resources, giving and receiving feedback, questions, and thoughts from members by sharing, commenting, and connecting inside and outside the community platform.

Next level contribution to the community through co-creation of products and services with the community team.

Recognition of peers because you earned the sesame after completing the program. The certification or document to complete the program is optional. As well as badges.

Behind the community scene, the light guide, the energy of the host, time to program and publish the activities, the strategy thought through before the program’s launch, the test and learned of the program, the coherence and weaving of the activities, resources, nudges, questions. This is an important work that a community host did and thought deeply about. But, without clarity and concretisation of all those elements, it can be a kind of artisanal and freestyle way to host a community program one cohort at a time.

The design of a community program doesn’t have to follow the steps of a learning program design: analysing, designing, deploying, evaluating. Why? Because qualitative, tailored, and human engagement needs to be kept in mind when creating a community or engagement program, even if it is blurred with a learning program to develop skills, capabilities, and mindsets. What are the steps to design an engaging and tailored community program?

Spotting the needs and emotions of the members. What are the signals, social cues, and patterns?

participer communauté embracing a community onboarding engagement hosting gathering mutations city

Photo shot by Rotana Ty

Curating and weaving existing resources, activities, and questions and producing new ones if relevant and needed. What is your community’s state of content curation, production, and management?

Designing and testing the conditions and online space to make things happen for the host and the members. How can we evaluate and pick the right community platform for the environment and conditions so that the hosting team and members can thrive, feel safe, heard and seen?

Unleashing one week and a day at a time a learning /community activity with a few resources and one question to nudge members to reflect on the activity they did, on themselves or to share their practices and thoughts with the members. What does the content, event, and engagement programming look like?

Reviewing on our own, collectively, and in the future, the takeaways, lessons learned, and progress documented through tools, templates, and participation in the program.

What could be out of control? And it is ok—90% of lurkers, 10% of active members.

The pace and frequency of posts from the members on the online platform. They may do it when they want, when they can, how they want, anywhere there want.

How do members use the tools you suggest them to use. Some may prefer to go offline and in-person to meet and interact with other members through the event. Others may add video or audio calls and usages of the enterprise social network to keep on with the asynchronous chat and live to share. Some may use none of them.

The energy, tone and weather in your community are unpredictable. At the same time, it may depend on your content, event, and engagement programming. The more members felt seen and heard, the more they may love your community and community team to promote your community and be highly engaged in contributing to it.

Embrace your community

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Community Management helps propel your internal community and scale engagement to keep learning and innovating with your organisation’s ecosystem.

January 28, 2022/0 Comments/by Rotana Ty

For each other

Learning, Self Development

I share what has caught my attention lately. Enjoy.

“One does not substitute oneself for the past, one merely adds to it a new link.” — Paul Cézanne via Leyla Kikukawa

“Healthy communities are a lot less emotionally exciting. They are actually mentally calming places that help people really thoughtfully consider options and support individuals in their growth.” — @rhappe

“Communities are not committees or project teams. People want to join them. Members feel affinity for communities which are centred on learning & improving as a professional. Communities of practice are becoming an essential component of getting work done.” — @hjarche

“Adopt a mutuality mindset by asking follow-up questions & seek sweet spots of mutual interest in conversations to attract diverse allies, to collectively see more sides of a situation (potential problem or opportunity) and make smarter decisions faster together, for each other.” — @KareAnderson

“Out of clutter find simplicity. From discord find harmony. In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.” — Albert Einstein via @swissmiss @johnmaeda

Source: https://twitter.com/lizandmollie/status/1460375380498399235

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January 28, 2022/0 Comments/by Rotana Ty

Four Ripples

I look back to look forward.

2021: what are my main themes, moments of change and ripples?

Table of Contents

Community Management

I dug deeper into the discipline of community management this year in various ways:

📜 Certified by The Community Roundtable: Community 101 | Community Frameworks and Models’, ‘Online Community Fundamentals’, Community Program Essentials.

📜 Reviewed the State of Community Management report 2021.

✍️ Continued the community blog post series with new posts: Community Reflection. Starting a Community. Hosting a Community.

✍️ Examined small online communities while using the McLuhan tetrad.

🌍 Engaged in a few global communities of practice.

An exhibit, ‘Arts of fighting in Asia’ in the Quai Branly Museum in Paris, made me reflect on how we align in life and work.

Community Management helps propel your internal community and scale engagement to keep learning and innovating with your organisation’s ecosystem.

Community Management, Top Posts

Learning Innovation

Learning on my own in networks and communities is still my intense focus and capability. Call it learnability, learning agility or continuous workplace learning. My cornucopia keeps evolving through a bunch of activities:

💻 Last year, I went to the Learning Technologies France conference to get a pulse on what’s happening in the workplace learning space. This year it was not on the ground in Paris but remotely.

☕ Participated again in the PKM Workshop hosted by Harold Jarche and monthly PBCC chats. Discover more in the #PKMastery series.

✍️ Shared my notes from the ‘Women in Learning’ podcast on mentoring.

Future Skills

Learnability is the mother of future skills. Through learning out loud posts and a curated post, I shared my iterations of what a future skills map or puzzle can look like:

🚶 Motion.

🧩 Activation.

🚀 Potential and Conversational.

This future skills map could be used by individuals, teams, networks, organisations and communities of practice to assess the state of their future skills and to explore the people, pedagogies and projects needed to enhance their learning and community potential.

One of the family skills in the future skills map is futures thinking. I sharpened my understanding and practice of futures thinking through an IFTF course and community in 2021.

Sensemaking

Being engaged within communities, learning continuously and developing future skills and thinking. Combining the three activities triggered the need to make sense of my learning journey and our crazy world. One of the shapes that emerged to do so was through book reading, notetaking, writing and publishing:

✍️ Unleashed the work behind the scene for the Tapestry book I wrote, edited, designed and published this year. I am grateful to each person who bought the Tapestry Book, promoted it, read it, shared feedback, and helped me produce it.

✍️ Shared my book annotated reading: A Brave New Era: Harold Jarche on Perpetual Beta — Our New Normal.

Visual thinking is also another shape of my sensemaking. Hiking and road trips in the French mountains and villages made me reach new heights.

Tapestry

Tapestry goes through my flâneur’s journey over 63 pages of my personal learnings, stories and reflections in an e-book format. Through thoughts, experience, practices, inspirations, nudges, and questions, I share my story to work and learn continuously in a networked world.

Hosting a Community

Summary

This post focuses on the steps involved in designing, onboarding, and hosting a community of practice or learning community. It emphasizes the importance of starting with a community strategy and design, especially for remote and distributed communities. The write-up includes a mindmap that outlines various scenarios and strategies for effective community management.

Table of Contents

Hosting a community

“The strength of the individual is the community. The strength of the community is the individual.” — @GeorgeSiosi

After reflecting on communities’ engagement and starting a community, designing, onboarding, and hosting a community come to mind. Those activities are the next natural steps of any community instigator and host.

Where does everything start with designing, onboarding, and hosting a community of practice or a learning community?

Especially when communities go remote and distributed. Any community professional would say: start first with community strategy and design, right?

Instead of writing a longish new post, here is below a mindmap I produced. Check out below. You can dive deep in each scenario

There are the three scenarios I shared in the post on starting’ a community – enriched with some thoughts on how a community could be designed, onboarded, hosted and supported.

A Reading List

What are “communities of practice”? by Dr Nicole Brown

The Basics of Community Strategy by @TheCR

Throwback Thursday – Community Strategy 101 by Shannon Abram

Why a community roadmap is important by Shannon Abram

The Peril of Top-Down Approaches To Community by Feverbee

When you’re starting a community, really you are designing one by Rosie Sherry

Your role in a community by Simon Tomes

Engagement Pyramid by Gideon Rosenblatt & Mobilisation Lab

Three Community Myths Busted – Goodbye 90-9-1 Rule By Ted McEnroe

Participation and silence by Taruna Goel

The Purpose Of Member Profiles by Feverbee

connect|share|lead by Isabel De Clercq

Lessons from the pandemic by Stephen Downes

Learning activities by Etienne Wenger

Community Series by Rotana Ty

Host your community

Community Management helps propel your internal community and scale engagement to keep learning and innovating with your organisation’s ecosystem.

Community Management, Top Posts

November 14, 2021/0 Comments/by Rotana Ty

Starting a Community

Summary

This post provides insights on how to start and nurture a community from scratch. It discusses the importance of having a community strategy and roadmap, selecting the right platform, and engaging with prospective members. The write-up also describes different scenarios for community platforms and the importance of starting small to build trust and engagement.

Table of Contents

rotana ty workplace learning performance collective intelligence

It is a shot taken during an exhibition on migration in the Mac Val Museum, France.

Starting a community

Starting a community from scratch: really?

“It’s not easy for a group of individuals, who do not know each other, to work collaboratively from the onset. It is even more difficult to ask that this collaboration occur online when the participants are not in the habit of working on the Internet. The practice of sharing needs to be joined with the tools that work for the culture. Finally, strategy includes the leadership, direction and project management of getting things going to work collaboratively online.

It’s important to get participants/members first used to processing their information flow online. A framework such as Personal Knowledge Mastery can be used, but each person must be given time to practice, connect and get feedback. The community also needs to be nurtured, one relationship at a time, as the creators of Flickr realized:”

“(…) Because culture is slow to change I would recommend starting with the simplest tool-set possible. Turn off most functions and only enable new ones when people start asking for more. As with tools, the same minimization principle goes for content. It is more important to build relationships and to draft the right people than it is to build the best content. Community trumps content online. Therefore, the focus should be on building connections.” —Harold Jarche

I can relate to what Harold wrote in his post when I recall my commitment to a startup when I worked and supported a network of offline facilitators of learning programs or circles. There was an academy to develop and hone the pedagogical approach to deploy and facilitate learning programs for organisations. A Slack was also used internally to connect the startup team and the facilitators to learn from each other’s facilitation experience in the trenches with the customers.

Still, the focus was on content and not so much on community, though. So how do we weave and wire members to learn faster and better together?

Building, & they will come. Not really.

Which approach do you use to start a community? Do you start with a community strategy and roadmap? Do you go straight to selecting an online platform and get the ball rolling? I hear what some experienced community professionals say when starting a community.

“The traditional way to start a community was to find a forum-based platform and invite your members to join. You initiate discussions and hope things take off.

And this is still the main approach for most brands today. The traditional approach gets the most attention not because it’s the best, but because it is the most visible when it works.

Yet your approach might be completely different – and that’s probably good. If you can’t reach a few thousand people, trying to launch a new community from scratch through a public forum probably isn’t the right approach. Increasingly, you get better results from targeting fewer people. And that’s probably going to mean using a non-traditional approach too.” — Richard Millington

Build, and they will come.

I have experienced and observed as an internal community manager or just an active member of some online communities – learning communities or communities of practice -different scenarios regarding using an online platform for the community. The community platform is the technology that hosts your community network.

Scenario 1: The platform as an enabler to power the community

The community platform is already existing before I join the community. So, I got an invitation via email to join after I met the community leader in person through a video call or in person. The onboarding is seamless.

I felt welcome, heard and saw one conversation – live and asynchronously – at a time. The host of the community is available and inclusive. We learn within the community continuously and grow organically. It lasts over months, quarters and years.

The community becomes one of the important ways to develop ourselves, make sense of the world and our experience, reflect and decide better.

Scenario 2: The platform is here. What’s next?

There is no community platform yet. So, the community leader has set up a new one to test the water and invite new members to join the club. Sometimes the architecture of a sandbox is done and is even tested with beta testers. Sometimes nothing is done at all. All the default features of the community platform are activated.

So, the members could be lost as there is no virtual peer assistance to onboard or support the members to navigate the platform, find the correct information to join the conversation on video calls or chats, and post something and connect with the members.

The community becomes a ghost town or desert because the community manager hasn’t worked on the content, event, and engagement programming and built a relationship with one member at a time.

Scenario 3: Ain’t no platform, so what?

No community platform is used. Instead, there is a combination of email to announce events, share news and knowledge through a newsletter, video calls for meetups, webinars, conferences and sometimes workshops. I see different intents here:

Gaining attention and traction from the participants who can be customers, partners, or thinkers in a host’s network.

Carrying on the business and personal relationship of the network through paid events or products to connect to specialists and generalists, access resources (ebooks, curated knowledge, workshop), recording conversations, text chats, transcripts, additional resources (blog posts, newsletters, Q&A).

So can we have a great community experience without spending a lot of bucks for a community platform by combining Slack or a WhatsApp group, a blog for announcements, and Zoom for meetings? Is it possible to build an audience via those tools if we start from scratch a community? Do we need to consider upgrading with a professional community platform to have better search traffic, follow discussions, and share information seamlessly?

How about letting know people about the new community experience you have? How is that the knowledge is lost or not findable in one day? Yet, people keep asking questions and find it hard to follow the conversation when they use Slack or IM messaging tools?

Which scenario(s) have you encountered with your internal community for your organisation or as an individual?

By the way, what the heck is a community? The Community Roundtable defines community as:

“A community is a group of people with shared values, behaviours, and artefacts.”

Starting small & with the needs

What are the conditions to make communities work from the early days of their birth and launch?

Are there any cells or gems of a community before a host or community manager comes and gathers the group to learn, grow, and become independent together?

Then, who can be in touch with you to know that you are instigating a new community?

“If you’re starting a new community, you need to invert this thought process. Spend the first two hours of your day reaching out to and engaging with prospective members of the community. Simply tell them you’re launching a community soon and are keen to learn from their expertise. Then squeeze in all the other activities around this” — Richard Millington

Before getting in touch, it starts with knowing the folks, their identity, intent, superpowers, needs and possible contributions?

Rachel Happe, founder of Engaged Organizations and The Community Roundtable, wrote in the Community Manager Handbook:

“Starting small also made it easier to build online and offline trust, which was critical to the research value of the community. Adding members to a trusting community proved much easier than establishing trust in a large community would have been.

“Do the right thing for your members and your community, and build the business to support that,” says Rachel.

“Then have confidence and patience to let it succeed.“

Patience and confidence. Things don’t happen overnight. It takes efforts, time and serendipity to see the low hanging fruits of trusted relationships, possible collaboration and cooperation, and support between members.

What I have experienced through some global communities since the pandemic hit.

And it starts with the needs first, rather than focusing on features of a technology.

“Starting with your needs, rather than features, is the smart approach.

“Different types of community structures will have very different platform requirements. Size, purpose, technical skills, support and security needs and other factors will all play roles in your choice.

But starting with your needs, rather than features, is the smart approach. After all, in the end it’s not about choosing the right platform. It’s about choosing the right platform for your community.” — The Community Manager Handbook

Start your community

Did you enjoy the post? Then, check out the Community Series.

Community Management helps propel your internal community and scale engagement to keep learning and innovating with your organization’s ecosystem.

Community Management, Top Posts

October 13, 2021/0 Comments/by Rotana Ty

Community Reflection

Summary

This post reflects on the experiences and engagement within online communities, especially during the pandemic. It discusses the importance of regular interactions, frameworks for assessing engagement, and the roles of community members and managers. The write-up also highlights the need for continuous learning and adaptation to improve community dynamics and engagement.

Table of Contents

Community Reflection

Fall is here. Leaves, nuts, mushrooms, grey, raining, sunny and windy days are coming as we live the Indian summer’s last days. Every year I enjoy this season very much.

A photo I shot in le Grand Paris during a Fall stroll.

This shift makes me revisit thoughts, experiences, and engagement within online communities and community projects and revisit the discipline of community management. In addition, I am observing community patterns and learning leading practices.

I have noticed the shift from public social networks to private online communities with the pandemic. To be felt, seen and heard. To be supported and uplifted by fellow explorers, seekers and instigators in a turbulent and ever-changing world.

I also became aware of how we engage in one conversation and community at a time, on a weekly, bi-weekly or monthly basis. From meetups and coffee chats to webinars to live chats. From learning programs to virtual peer assistance. There is a framework to enable organisations and individuals, especially community professionals, to assess the efficacy and depth of their engagement maturity, strategy and actions. Each year we can discover the state of community management through a report and webinar from The Community Roundtable that brings clarity with research and trends on the work of mavens and game-changing networked organisations.

Engaging within Communities

I have gained perspectives on different roles: from being a member and a host to being an internal community strategist and manager.

As an active member of global communities – communities of practice, and learning communities focused on learning and work futures. I am immersed in getting to know and support members, sharing knowledge, experience, and reflecting. To make sense of our complex and changing world. To develop habits, practices and approaches from disciplines such as community management, futures thinking and personal knowledge mastery, and to decide better.

We may make and close triangles and other shapes from those gatherings – flat or in 3D. What works and what doesn’t work for networks weaving/convening?

“Making your network smarter is one aspect of leadership in our digitally connected world and so is convening the best parts of your network in order to address complex issues and make decisions. In crises, sometimes perfection is the enemy of the good, so having a diverse, knowledgeable, and experienced group of advisors becomes critical.” — @hjarche

I learn faster because I feel safe, seen, and heard within a private online space with practitioners worldwide. Because there is trustworthiness built and nurtured one conversation, week/month/quarter/year at a time. Through coffee chats, meetups, webinars and asynchronous chats on instant messaging or community platforms.

communautés réflexion community management reflection engagement learning practice leadership manager

View from the top of La Samaritaine, Paris, France.

Bundling Forces

Is there room for improvement for potential cooperation and collaboration between members to instigate anything? Whether it is a small artefact or project, a bigger one or a community/learning program to onboard, develop, and even offboard members.

How can we make gatherings work better to work smarter together through distributed work and networked learning?

How can we unleash the value of asynchronous chats and live Zoom chats, reduce the Zoom fatigue, and level up the low engagement of members that inevitably occurs after waves of high engagements?

Our professional development can be propelled through online communities and could be the gateway to explore possible collaborative projects if:

We would activate the strengths, knowledge flows, and intents if there are/, are the host(s) who foster, boost and nurture waves of events, contents, and engagements touchpoints.

The active members know the why they gather and engage – whether it is for their work lifestyle integration, enhancing their learning and community potential/performance, and bringing back their humanity in a world of constraints, uncertainty and hyper-connectedness.

“There is but one solution to the intricate riddle of life; to improve ourselves, and contribute to the happiness of others.” via @brainpicker

Being in Community Motion

As a host of gatherings, conversations and activities such as the community book club and the host of future skills workshops. I enjoy being the master of ceremony, host, animation,r and the captain of cohort/group/crew to observe how social dynamics evolve fast and slow over one hour or day, whether through online community book clubs or F2F workshops to develop social skills.

I noticed through my experience that it is about the energy that comes from me. It can be supercharged when people come together with resources: curated and created content, learning circles, silence and chatty moments. We use collaborative tools and analogue, physical movement and peer observations/feedback.

It is also about the velocity and serendipity of conversations and the random collision of participants who may be reassured to know what the plan of an event is in the kick-off of a workshop or a book club. But then we do something completely different and unique with outputs they/I haven’t predicted. It is about embracing not knowing and exploring at large with our boundless curiosity. This is about innovating to test the water, making sense by looking back to look forward while activating our superpowers, actionable insights and small caring networks and communities.

And the journey doesn’t stop when the workshop or the book club stops. It can and must continue through follow up resources, future sessions or reviews of past ones to convene and keep developing members of doers.

The Lake of White Swans, Le Grand Paris, France.

Riding the Community Waves

As an internal community manager of learning and community program to develop future skills and scale engagement. This work can include:

Scoping a distributed work and networked learning program, activities and resources to develop future work capabilities, mindset and toolset.

Contributing to the learning design of the program: co-creation of innovative pedagogical events, content and engaging touchpoints to make the community members work, learn and reflect together.

Onboarding, accompanying and offboarding each member based on their context, needs and constraints in the context of the pandemic.

Coordinating and hosting gatherings as a generous and professional host/leader within the learning community/community of practice/centre of excellence that went remote and distributed.

Programming F2F and digital events, content and engagement times to generate and propel community members’ active engagement and professional development.

Providing pedagogical, mental and technological virtual peer assistance through social presence, many actions, resources, and a community team.

Working on community measurement and metrics to work on indicators and improvements that matter to the organisation.

Putting on the spotlight the crème de la crème of active members – profiles, productions, actionable insights from conversations, projects and results through a consistent and meaningful editorial calendar, distribution and amplification of social posts, scale of the minimum viable audience, and retrospective and synthesis for the collective intelligence.

This work can be exciting, energising and draining, especially when there is only one community manager who brings continuous real-time and asynchronous support to members who need assistance on pedagogical or technological issues regarding the learning program or the community platform we use. The fuel in the community movement takes patience and effort and is rewarding waves after waves of support, conversation and motion.

There will always be a cycle of engagement with highs and lows. Vibrant live and asynchronous conversations, events and movements and other times are when the community is like a ghost town or a desert.

“Many executives conflate online social networks with online communities and because of this miss the opportunity, continuing to view engagement as potentially polarizing and risky. Yet well-managed communities offer safe learning environments that contribute positively to an organization’s brand and culture, with no associated risk. This then is the opportunity for all organizations who hope to thrive in the digital era – and current community leaders are showing us the way.” — Shannon Abram

Activating Communities & Engagement Leadership

What are the heck communities made for? In a 1-1 conversation with a global chief learning officer of a large organisation, we reflected on communities of practice and learning communities.

A community of practice enables behaviour change as activities are unleashed and done within them. We make sense and decide better. We share and hand over content, stories, and experiences within learning communities. We activate our superpowers and wings. We have each other’s back and peer support as we bounce back and go onward and upwards. A learning community becomes powerful when it becomes a community of practice as resources are activated, and the action continues.

Still, it would start with engagement leadership and digital communities, as shared by Céline Schillinger in her video. Some notes from what I heard:

The way we think, behave and do is part of engagement leadership. Work as interactions, as Esko Kilpi said. We are part of different networks. There is a shift from audience to co-creators. Passive to active.

A catalyst for new connections and coherence is leadership in communities. We are pulling people together instead of pushing. It is about targets, not brands, but hearts, souls, and participants of creators. We expand sensemaking from executives and experts to everyone. The pandemic challenges how we work together, bond and build trust together. Digital communities are hard to engage because we are all remote, stressed and overloaded.

What can we do? 1. Adapting our systemic leadership, i.e. to the principle of complex adaptive systems. 2. Bringing digital diversity: using asynchronous chats and wikis, not just Zoom, to reinvent conversations. 3. Paying attention to our online presence – how you show up matters a lot, and show how you contribute as a digital global citizen.

“How to maintain engagement with your community? How do you dance with complexity?”

Introducing the Community Series

Based on my experience, education, curation and thinking, I share a series of blog posts on the art and discipline of community management.

Do you reflect on the purpose of your community to enhance its potential?

What does inspire you in your community?

What insight do you learn from it?

What do you think of your work with your crew in your community?

What can you do together now and in the future?

Reflect on your community

Community Management helps propel your internal community and scale engagement to keep learning and innovating with your organisation’s ecosystem.

September 15, 2021/0 Comments/by Rotana Ty

Emergent Strategies

Emergent Strategies – Curated Insights.

When time allows I share the crème de la crème of actionable insights from my network and beyond.

“The way to get to the future is the future you get.” — Myron Rogers HT @CelineSchill

“Emergent strategy: “We cannot know first, then act. We must experiment tentatively, learn more about our context, and continuously revise our plans.” – From Scotland’s nature preservation organization @nature_scot” HT @marshallk

“The state of brittleness in our world is an outcome of an efficiency mindset that has long been prevalent. That’s because efficiency has been a competitive advantage. Competing is now about resilience more than efficiency, and that will be a tough transition to accept.” — @johnmaeda

“Life is bristling with thorns, andI know no other remedy than to cultivate one’s garden.“ — Voltaire via @bronwynwilliams

“I don’t want to be that person that is not going to speak up for myself whatever career choices I make or whatever life decisions I make, I will walk away with my dignity” — @LucyLiu in the Asian Enough Podcast

“Talent is insignificant. I know a lot of talented ruins. Beyond talent lie all the usual words: discipline, love, luck, but most of all, endurance.” Baldwin, born on this day in 1924, on writing via @brainpicker

“Many people with ADHD are quite visually driven and thrive with consistency.” — Mandy Caruso, @clickup

“Two important sensemaking types of tools that everyone should use are feed aggregators and social bookmarks. Though the specific tools may change, everyone needs a way to control the push of information and a way to save, categorize, and annotate resources for later use.” — @hjarche

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August 21, 2021/0 Comments/by Rotana Ty

Start with Big Art & Heart

Curated, Leadership

New month, new possibilities.

When time allows, I will share a curated post—the topic of July: six ways to start with art and heart for work, learning and leadership. Read on what caught my attention.

Table of Contents

Artful

“art is a p(art) of every st(art)” — @johnmaeda

“Art, or as I call it heART, is not a skill, a process or a tool for coping and entertaining. It is the very essence at the center of our being that when evoked and practiced helps us create new paradigms.

(…) “Learning is messy and non-linear. It becomes wisdom as we experience that messiness in full. Living fully (heARTfully) might require we start learning to listen to that messiness, not to control it but to express it with beauty and harmony.” — @FBanishoeib

Pandemic Haiku

“No longer asking Who will sink and who will swim? Together we rise”
— Caitlin M. Aamodt

I also share my Pandemic haiku after a hike I did in the mountain of the Alps. Explore more in this blog post on the new heights I reached.

Work Futures

“To me, remote implies a physical distance, while distributed is more about the connections, the conversations & interactions.” — @elsua HT @sorokti

“Great list of resources to explore the future of learning/future of work https://rotanaty.com/2020/10/25/communities” — @rhappe

Networks & Systems

“A system is never the sum of its parts. It is the product of its interactions.” — Russell Ackoff HT @PaulJocelyn

“Network value is about individual contribution and team contribution and organizational contribution. All connected.

Network value is all working with some agility and some replicable and some speed and some slowing down. Network value is complex and dynamic.

Network value is people, nested systems, working within a system. Network value is systems thinking.” — Bruce McTague

“When you discover someone who sums up what you have been saying for 15 years in one, elegant sentence. I do still like the Red Queen analogy though T/y for the intro @rotanarotana” — @rhappe

Are You The Red Queen? from The Community Roundtable

Tapestry goes through my flâneur’s journey over 63 pages of my personal learnings, stories and reflections in an e-book format. I share my story through thoughts, experience, practices, inspirations, nudges, and questions to work and learn continuously in a networked world.

Inside Out

“But my introversion is my super-power. As an introvert I spend time with myself, constantly reconnecting with my personal values and priorities. As an introvert I find the space to reflect, analyse, and strategize.

There is nothing timid, silly, or weak about the quietness of the introvert. It is not an effacing of assertiveness; it’s a gathering of strength.” — @DangerousMere

“When I am silent, I have thunder hidden inside.” — Rumi

Storms can gift solace to the soul.

Thunder, and wind, at the 20 second mark.

I treasure nature’s gifts, large and small.

#sixtysecondsolitude — Hal Gregersen

Leadership

“#Regenerative #leadership calls for a profound paradigm shift from the present models of leadership characterized by power, control, assertiveness, aggression, competition, and ‘winner takes all’ mindset.

Regenerative Leaders are facilitators and stewards of their organizations, communities, societies. They put their businesses in service to life, not the other way round.” — @sahana2802

source: @sahana2802

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July 11, 2021/0 Comments/by Rotana Ty

Supercharge Innovation

Innovation

Supercharge innovation.

I attended a TECH TALK X Women in Tech this week with Lucy Cooper – Head of Innovation, Accenture Europe and INSEAD.

“Lucy will share her deep expertise in nurturing growth mindsets, scaling experimentations and developing breakthrough digital products, services and business models.

She is also a standout champion for women’s issues, an advocate and mentor for women in technology.

Learn from Lucy’s formidable journey from setting up a digital fundraising platform for Y Combinator in Silicon Valley to advising leading clients in Europe on how to transform and innovate by combining disruptive technologies with new business models.

The webinar is hosted by Peter Zemsky, Deputy Dean of INSEAD.”

Here are below my notes.

Table of Contents

On Leadership

Give and lose trust, you don’t earn it. Do the company have your back when you work – the whole experience – and even when you are outside the office hours?

Leadership is about perseverance. Leaders need to be in the arena, right beside me. Leaders practitioners.

Learn about yourself as a leader.

On Growth Mindset

Carol Dweck on the Growth Mindset with her book: ‘Mindset’.

Curiosity + courage are the top things to have and the toughest things to do as innovators shakers while having integrity in mind to progress.

Trying + learning + progressing with your boss/organization/team.

Learning culture is having curiosity time, low ego, humility, and podcast walking.

Worth reading: Tim Ferris’s book: Tools of Titans.

On Innovation

Innovation can include product, strategy, business model design, core business improvement/delivery, and executive change management.

What is your innovation agenda?

What do you define? What’s the output?

Ask questions to know more about the organization’s needs.

On Consulting & Problem Solving

Consulting: not settling with the status quo. The on-the-job learning experience with large portfolios and sectors.

“If you aren’t fixing the problem, you are breaking it.”

Solve the problems with all the voices: men and women at the table. Inclusion: enables anyone to speak. With equity: on the same level to contribute. And diversity: sounds the same and different as you, not just look like you.

Inclusiveness. Drive cognitive diversity. Work on cognitive bias.

On Emerging Trends

Any industry is manufacturing futures with automation, AI and data.

Just think of how the vaccines came out.

Game-changers to watch out for Lucy: suppliers and energy in the Nordics, L’Oréal.

Life science industry: illness, health to treat better people. All those organizations put data at the core of everything they do.

Supercharge your Ingenuity & Innovation with Future Skills

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July 3, 2021/0 Comments/by Rotana Ty

Now-Proofing Your Skills

Futures Thinking

Now-proofing your skills.

Why? How?

I completed the online certified course ‘‘Life After COVID-19: Get Ready for our Post-Pandemic Future‘ hosted by Jane McGonigal. She invited fellow futurists to gain clarity on ‘Action For Transformation’.

Project Title

Now-proofing your skills

Pattern From the Past

MIT and the World Economic Forum have identified an urgent global need to reskill and upskill the workforce. But are companies, educational institutions and large consultancies failing to support people who are not in control of the system to fix their skills for the now – for distributed working and learning?

Innovation for the Future

Any worker from anywhere and any discipline can develop and improve remote and distributed work/learning skills through the 40-day online workshop facilitated by Harold Jarche, with an international cohort and host, on-demand coaching and a global community of practice, The Perpetual Beta Coffee Club, after completing the workshop one week at a time. There is also my list of global communities on the future of work/learning/community/leadership that may be of interest to you.

Action for Transformation

My participation in the distributed work skills workshop with a global cohort makes me realize the importance of sharing reflections and lessons learned, work and learning in progress – out loud through a blog post series, the #PKMastery Series, a future skills map, and global community conversations on working and learning in a networked society.

Make a micro-plan

“What could you do in your own “first 5 minutes” to get this work underway, right now?” ~ Jane McGonigal, IFTF

Frequent use and review of the Future Work Skills 2020 map in the IFTF report to quickly assess each skill on a scale of 1 to 5 to create my own state of distributed work and learning skills, share it in a conversation with a peer, activate my strengths on my own, in any teams, networks and communities.

Source: https://www.iftf.org/futureworkskills

Go Further

Read and use: Potential and conversational.

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June 25, 2021/by Rotana Ty

Deep Artful Work

Curated, Working

Deep Artful Work – Insights Of the Week

“Motivation often comes after starting, not before.

Action produces momentum.” — James Clear

“The walking experience dictates the ideas, which is what makes creative walks such a unique working adventure. The visuality of the mountain, the scene it sets, the associations it forms in your mind all help to kick start the process of harvesting memories and combining them with facts, strategies and ideas.” — Marcus John Henry Brown

“I have reflected about that story quite a few times since then – emotions, as you know, create sustainable memories … and it has anchored in my mind a conviction in the power of “social learning” : it is by sharing with others that light comes ! Whatever knowledge, information or insights we receive, it is by discussing, confronting and mirroring with others that they eventually make sense, and therefore are profoundly learned.” — Thierry Bonetto

“Instead, I’m going to use my own curation, research, note taking and real life networking skills to directly approach people and explore their ideas without having to have conversations about it openly. That is, I’d like to slow things down and really take in, reflect, write about what I’m finding – that is, more seeking and sense making than sharing.

I figured that my many years online has put me in contact with so many people, given me access to so many opportunities that I wouldn’t have otherwise thought possible and put me front and centre with some wonderful, radical, innovative ideas and people.

It’s been brilliant frankly.” — Helen Blunden

“By forcing myself to write a summary or an observation, I have to reflect on my own learning. Also, by making my thoughts public I know that they will be scrutinized – now and in the future. There’s nothing like public visibility to make you check your logic. I also view my blog as my main communication medium, letting me converse with potential clients or provide them with a venue to get to know me without any feelings of obligation. Basically, it’s all out there for the world to see.” — Harold Jarche

“But to make the thing you are capable of making, you have to keep trying, make some bad work, move past that, keep trying, make some OK work, learn from that, keep trying, make some bad work again, reflect some more, keep trying, and then make that capable (even great?) piece. Then move on from that. Keep trying. Make some more bad work. Keep trying. And so on. And so forth.” — Meredith Lewis

“Art is also found in the way we do our work. That might seem odd but if you really think about your work as a form of craft, it might just shift you from being a cog in a machine to a one-off with each call you handle, email you reply to and with each conversation you engage in.

Listening — in the above example — can be made more powerful, useful and impactful if you treat things more artfully than transactional. OK, maybe not the discussion on whether to allocate £400 or £4000 to a project or what to have for tea, but when people are confused, need some guidance, to learn something, grow in confidence or to diffuse tension. More artful listening might just make the difference in many complex and challenging situations.” — Perry Timms

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June 18, 2021/0 Comments/by Rotana Ty

Visual Thinking

Series of Posts

“Your visual thinking, That, more than anything, is what I think is special about you. You have talent there, I think.” — Anne Marie Rattray

This is the feedback I got regarding the strengths I build. Below are some of my productions that weave words and visuals I produced over the years.

learner experience propelling expérience apprenante propulser sea ireland howth

Shifting Story

Learning Futures

Learning, Futures Thinking

Effects of Audio

Learning

apprentissage continu en réseau pkm personal knowledge mastery rotana ty

PKM: what does it look like?

Learning, Top Posts

Visualizing Ourselves

Self Development

personal knowledge mastery flow blue overlaps design learning collaboration cooperation resources tools digital rotana ty

Top Tools

Working, Learning, Top Posts

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